Since its inception in 1993, 'Horizon' has taken-on a number of challenging and socially-relevant themes that affect Chemistry with the sole aim of setting-up a rational scientific discourse amongst the student community. This year, 'Horizon' aims to throw light on the versatility of 'Magnetic resonance in catalysis technology' and their diverse applications. 

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Magnetic resonance (MR), in the form of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, is well established as a research tool for investigations of the structures of solid catalysts and molecular species adsorbed on them. However, during the past decade there has been increasing interest in using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to study, in particular, flow fields inside reactors. These studies have recently been extended to measurements of chemical conversion within model reactor systems. The real power of MR techniques is that by bringing together spectroscopy, diffusion, micro-imaging, and flow imaging, they provide a non-invasive, chemically specific measurement technique which can characterize a system over length scales ranging from the angstrom- to the centimeter scale. In this review, recent developments in MRI pulse sequences are summarized and applications to investigations of both hydrodynamics and catalytic conversion within catalysts and catalytic reactors are presented.

 

 

EMR techniques have been extensively used in the past year to explore problems relevant to heterogeneous catalysis, including surface defects and radicals, redox processes with supported transition metal ions and in situ studies at elevated temperatures. The combination of these techniques with computational methods, can now be used to provide detailed structural information of active sites even in polycrystalline materials. Developments in high field EMR and the utilisation of pulsed EMR methods are providing marked improvements in sensitivity and spatial resolution of paramagnetic surface states

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