Interview with Chair of the International Expert Council Professor Francis Verpoort

The Palladium Global Science Award is open for submissions until the end of July. Professor Francis Verpoort, Chair Professor of the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Material Synthesis and Processing at Wuhan University of Technology, is the Chair of the International Expert Council, which will evaluate applications and select the prize winners. We sat down with Professor Verpoort to discuss his expertise in organometallic chemistry, the competition and the latest in palladium developments.

Could you tell us about your professional background in organometallic chemistry?

It all started with my PhD at Ghent University in Belgium, where I was asked to make a catalyst for olefin metathesis. This is where you have molecules with double bonds, and you cut the double bonds and reorganise the fragments to create new compounds with double bonds. My task was to develop the ‘scissors’ for this process, i.e. the catalyst. We were working with tungsten, which showed good results, and this resulted in patents.

After my PhD, I began working with ruthenium, and there was quite a lot of competition at that time. We ended up spinning off a company from Ghent University based on the work we did, and some of those catalysts are still commercially available today.

Organometallic chemistry is about taking a metal and combining organic ligands with it, and the two components are connected by a carbon. It’s a huge area of research, and it uses all kinds of metals. The sky’s the limit compared with organic chemistry, where you are more or less limited to carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur.

Here in China, I’m working on a link between organometallic chemistry and materials science. I’ve started to make metal–organic frameworks, where we make all kinds of functional materials for catalysis, electrochemistry, water splitting and more.

What role has palladium played in your work?

The metal–organic frameworks we were working on in China were quite cumbersome. Normally you have to add your metal, the organic ligand and a solvent. You put it in an autoclave and wait for one to four days and heat it to a certain temperature. Hopefully this results in some crystals – the metal–organic framework – but it’s quite difficult to incorporate nanoparticles because you have no control over what happens inside an autoclave. We developed a metal to synthesise these frameworks via a spray method, and this is where palladium comes in. We used a palladium acetate, and through spray-drying, immediately we obtained a catalyst containing palladium nanoparticles. We were able to use it for the hydrogenation of olefins. The catalyst showed very strong results, and this process has applications for the food industry, such as in the production of margarine.

We’re also trying to make everything greener and more sustainable today, so we began using porous organic polymers. They should be conjugated, which means they have alternating single and double bonds. This allows them to absorb light, which could be UV light but also sunlight. Upon contact with light, the electrons are excited, and can then be used for a number of purposes. To stimulate this process, we add palladium nanoparticles to the porous polymer, and the electrons flow to the palladium where the reaction is triggered. We were able to produce autocatalytic catalysts for carbon–carbon coupling reactions. These reactions are very important in the pharmaceutical industry.

What new palladium applications are you most excited about in the broader palladium community?

Right now, researchers are working on single atom catalysts. This means placing single atoms on a surface, rather than a cluster or an agglomeration with another particle. Now, we can separate single atoms from each other, increasing atom efficiency and ensuring that every palladium atom is active. At the moment, this is happening at the laboratory scale, so it still has to be scaled up. This is a real challenge, but if it can be achieved, we will have higher selectivity and fewer byproducts.

Looking at green technologies and the energy transition, do you see an acceleration happening?

The hydrogen economy is an area where palladium can bring a real boost. Many countries around the world are seeking to build a hydrogen economy. To do this, they will have to use palladium, which is a special element in that it can absorb up to 900 times its volume in hydrogen. Palladium is used as a membrane to purify hydrogen, as only hydrogen can pass through it. You obtain very pure hydrogen, which is essential for fuel cells, where hydrogen and oxygen are combined to generate energy. These are areas where we could see a real boost in the near future.

Germany, for example, is looking at using hydrogen-powered trains, which will require palladium. And the photocatalysts, which I mentioned before, are of interest to the pharmaceutical industry as they bring high turnover and high selectivity, generating fewer byproducts. This means a greener and cheaper industry.

Electronics is another area of interest for palladium that could see stable if not exponential growth. Our phones use multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs), and these need palladium, as do contacts in other components in our phones and computers. More and more research is also being carried out on palladium alloys in this area.

How does the environment for cooperation between science and business look at present?

The Palladium Global Science Award is actually a good initiative to stimulate research on palladium. The prizes are significant, and this could encourage people to do more specific research on palladium.

Joint research initiatives could also be of interest. For example, a car company interested in fuel cells could offer grants to universities, promoting direct interaction between academia and business. This does rely on the willingness of companies to outsource some of their research, but that is not a major obstacle.

Government can also play a role here, if for instance something like fuel cells play a part in carbon emission reduction plans. They could then provide incentives such as tax reductions.

China is regarded as a leader in the green economy. What developments are you seeing there?

In China, the big focus over the last decade has been electric vehicles, and now we’re seeing the results. They are producing EVs en masse and exporting them everywhere, and when you’re in China you see a lot of them on the road. China is also producing all the necessary equipment for charging. Here too, palladium has an application in electronic contacts and sensors. Additionally, China is also looking at the hydrogen economy, and we can expect some commercialisation in the next few years.

As the Jury Chair, what are you looking for from candidates for the Palladium Global Science Award?

Firstly, we’re hoping to get a lot of candidates! What matters most is excellence – we want more than just routine scientific work. For example, if a researcher is working on an alloy, such as palladium combined with silver, and this provides much higher catalytic performance than existing compounds, that would be perfect.

The work should rise to global challenges. Clean energy and sustainability are of great interest to society as a whole, so palladium research that deals with this is of interest to us.

Innovation is also crucial. If it’s just another palladium catalyst that performs a carbon–carbon reaction and makes only minor improvements, this is not innovation. We’re looking for candidates who are pushing the boundaries of palladium. For example, if somebody explored the role of palladium in something like quantum computing, this would be real innovation.

We’re also interested in candidates working on interdisciplinary research. Scientists working at the intersection of palladium and functional materials with applications in something like aerospace would be very interesting to us.

Image: Professor Francis Verpoort / TPU