Effect of the Modification of Catalysts on the Catalytic Performance, 3rd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Improving catalytic performance by modifying catalysts is crucial for optimizing chemical processes, enhancing efficiency, and achieving sustainable, cost-effective outcomes in various industrial applications. Modifying catalysts involves altering their structure, composition, and surface properties to achieve superior activity, selectivity, and stability. The structural and compositional complexity of the catalytic system requires a strong systematic approach to elucidate the nature of the catalyst’s active sites.

We provide an overview of how modifications contribute to improving catalytic performance: enhancing activity (increasing surface area, nanomaterials and nano-scale control, activation of inert sites), improving selectivity (modification of the active site, control of surface properties, electronic tuning), increasing stability and durability (metal support interactions, surface coatings, promoters and stabilizers), enhancing resistance to deactivation, improving reaction kinetics (nano-structuring, co-catalyst addition), facilitating reactant activation (electronic modification, geometrical control), cost-effective catalysis (substitution of precious metals, promoting catalysts with less expensive materials), sustainability and environmental impact (lower energy requirements, waste minimization, reusability).

Important research directions are understanding catalytic mechanisms at the molecular level, catalyst deactivation and stability, catalyst recovery and recycling, developing sustainable and earth-abundant catalysts, balancing activity, selectivity, and stability, catalysis under mild conditions, characterization and in situ analysis, catalyst design via artificial intelligence and modeling, scale-up from lab to industry, environmental and regulatory constraints and catalyst cost and availability.

The synthesis of catalysts is a critical step that determines their structure, activity, selectivity, and stability. However, synthesizing catalysts—especially with controlled nanostructures or compositions—presents numerous technical and practical challenges. The major challenges involved in catalyst synthesis are controlling particle size, shape, and distribution, uniform dispersion on supports, phase and crystallinity control, scalability and reproducibility, precise doping and alloying, porosity and surface area engineering, reproducibility of preparation methods, time and cost efficiency, atomic-level control and green and sustainable synthesis.

Photocatalysts utilize light to accelerate chemical reactions, and their synthesis presents unique challenges compared to conventional catalysts. The photocatalysts are used in applications such as solar energy conversion, environmental cleanup (e.g., water splitting, water decontamination, CO₂ reduction).

To be effective, the photocatalyst needs to absorb light efficiently, exhibit high stability, and promote specific reactions without degrading over time. The key challenges in the synthesis of photocatalysts include efficient light absorption and utilization, light absorption and band gap control, charge carrier separation and transport, stability and photodegradation, nanostructure and morphology control, surface interaction and active site formation, doping and co-catalyst incorporation, among others.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to present state-of-the-art strategies for modifying catalysts, aiming to provide an important contribution to the development of research in this area from both practical and theoretical perspectives.

Dr. Florica Papa
Dr. Anca Vasile
Dr. Gianina Dobrescu
Guest Editors

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• catalytic performance
• catalyst
• synergetic effect
• modification of catalysts
• selectivity
• catalyst synthesis
• reaction mechanism
• catalytic activity
• photocatalysis

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