Most of the basic chemicals are produced in industry using heterogeneous catalysts. However, in order to optimize the catalysts for a specific reaction, an understanding of the underlying elementary processes is essential, but often lacking. Photocatalytic processes are even more complex. The presentation will highlight most recent findings from fundamental studies with a focus on oxidic catalysts partially modified with metal nanoparticles. Issues such as the influence of defects on the population of certain reaction pathways, strong metal support interactions (SMSI), alloying or hot electron dynamics in complex systems will be tackled. One of the focal points will be on TiO₂ as it is nontoxic, earth abundant and low priced and thus has been widely studied also in view of its interesting photocatalytic properties.^[1-6] Model reactions such as low temperature partial oxidation of methanol to formaldehyde as well as C-C-coupling of benzaldehyde will be emphasized.
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[4] N. Petrik, M. Henderson, G. Kimmel, J. Phys. Chem. C, 2015, 119, 12262-12272.
[5] P. Clawin, C. Friend, K. Al-Shamery, Chem. Eur. J., 2014, 20, 7665-7669.
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