Ritubarna Banerjee

Ritubarna Banerjee completed a Masters degree in Material Science and Engineering. She joined Dr.Crozier’s group in Fall, 2007. She also has a Masters in Physical Chemistry. Her work focused on developing efficient supported catalytic systems for energy production. Silica supported nickel catalysts was the major focus because of its high selectivity for syn gas production in the partial oxidation of methane. The work involved synthesizing the catalyst while observing the behavior under oxidizing and reducing conditions, variable gas pressures and thermal treatments and monitoring the changes using modern in situ and ex situ nanocharacterization techniques. This gave a fundamental understanding of the nanoscale processes occurring in catalyst systems along with the phase transformations, structural and morphological changes. To develop a deeper understanding of the functionality of these catalysts, it is necessary to understand the structure-activity relationship. By correlating information from the various aspects of synthesis and characterization, a fundamental understanding of the relationship between the nanostructure and activity of the catalyst was achieved.