Incorporating individual metal atoms into a surface in the right way allows their chemical behavior to be adapted. This makes new, better catalysts possible.
They make our cars more environmentally friendly and they are indispensable for the chemical industry: catalysts make certain chemical reactions possible—such as the conversion of CO into CO2 in car exhaust gases—that would otherwise happen very slowly or not at all. Surface physicists at the TU Wien have now achieved an important breakthrough; metal atoms can be placed on a metal oxide surface so that they show exactly the desired chemical behavior. Promising results with iridium atoms have just been published in the renowned journal Angewandte Chemie.
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