Prof Alexandra Navrotsky from University of California at Davis discusses the effects of thermodynamically driven changes in phase relations and water adsorption energetics on catalytic, sensing, geochemical reactions, and environmental transport.
The thermodynamic properties of nanomaterials are substantially changed by surface energy effects. Based on recent measurements of surface energies in the Peter A. Rock Thermochemistry Laboratory at the University of California at Davis, the speaker and her research group see systematic trends in surface energies as a function of structure and composition in oxide systems. The difference in surface energy of different phase assemblages leads to large shifts in polymorphism, dehydration, and redox equilibria. With examples of titanium, tin, zirconium, iron, and manganese oxides, the effects of such thermodynamically driven changes in phase relations and water adsorption energetics on catalytic, sensing, geochemical reactions, and environmental transport are discussed.
About the speaker
Prof Alexandra Navrotsky received her PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1967. After postdoctoral work in Germany and at Pennsylvania State University, she joined the faculty in Chemistry at Arizona State University, where she remained till her move to Princeton University in 1985. She was Chair and then Albert G. Blanke, Jr. Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton. She joined the University of California at Davis in 1997, and is currently Distinguished Professor, and Edward Roessler Chair and Interim Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
Prof Navrotsky’s research interests have centered about relating microscopic features of structure and bonding to macroscopic thermodynamic behavior in minerals, ceramics, and other complex materials. She has made contributions to mineral thermodynamics; mantle mineralogy and high pressure phase transitions; silicate melt and glass thermodynamics; order-disorder in spinels; framework silicates; and other oxides; ceramic processing; oxide superconductors; nanophase oxides, zeolites, nitrides, perovskites; and the general problem of structure-energy-property systematics. The main technical area of her laboratory is high temperature reaction calorimetry. She has published over 700 scientific papers.
Prof Navrotsky received numerous prestigious awards including received the Ross Coffin Purdy Award, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science, the Urey Medal, the Harry H. Hess Medal and the Roebling Medal. She is a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
