The history of catalysis is characterised by a consistent endeavour to (i) develop new catalysts for specific processes; and (ii) to understand more clearly the reaction mechanisms taking place on the catalytic sites.
The latter objective has been helped enormously by advances in physical techniques, such as gas chromatography, infrared spectroscopy, laser Raman spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, XPS, SIMS, etc. All of these techniques have in turn continued to develop and yield more useful information as a result of the availability of ever more powerful data handling computers.
The reason why computers have made such an impact is that, for the past twenty years or so, they have become more powerful, year by year, while becoming less expensive in real terms. This trend is due largely to the advances made in integrated circuits (i.e. silicon chips). It shows every sign of continuing.
The results will have major impacts on catalysis. On the one hand, increased computing power, coupled with the availability of sophisticated software, will open up new prospects -for example for simulating the behaviour of molecules on surfaces; for predicting the location of active sites; and for simulating the behaviour of complex structures such as zeolites. On the other hand, many of the techniques which have been developed to fabricate integrated circuits and to characterise them have the potential to make a major impact on catalysis. The following are some examples:
Silicon chips are made by selectively etching single crystal silicon into complex patterns, in which the dividing walls may be a few microns wide. There is a consistent drive to make these patterns more compact because this makes the device more powerful. The result is that the most modern chips have structure widths of less than 1 micron. The lithographic techniques used to produce these structures in silicon can also be used to produce patterns in metals, which can then be used as model catalysts.