On Friday, Luuk Kempen successfully defended his PhD thesis titled "Leveraging machine learning for materials discovery: Inverse catalysts for CO₂ hydrogenation". Luuk will continue with InterCat as a postdoc in the Mie Andersen group.

During his PhD studies, Luuk researched how machine learning can be used to explore materials used to convert CO2 into more useful products such as methanol. Specifically, inverse catalysts—metal oxide nanoparticles supported on metal surfaces—are investigated as they have shown very promising activity in laboratory experiments. By developing and applying machine learning methods, Luuk showed how this type of materials is structured at an atomic level. He further showed how a key intermediate in the conversion of CO2, formate, is formed on these materials.
The new research methods and findings contribute to insights of these inverse catalysts on an atomic level, which can be used to further develop more performant materials for CO2 conversion.

Congratulations Luuk, and well done. We are very happy that you are continuing with InterCat.