For the human body, it is a well-known practice: if you feel ill, you measure your body temperature. Above 38°C, you have a fever and your body functioning impairs. Now, CoCooN researchers have discovered that the temperature of catalysts—nanomaterials that accelerate sustainable chemical reactions—also changes during reactions, potentially altering their performance.

Catalysts are the workhorses of our chemical industry, converting low-value chemical base molecules, such as greenhouse gases, into sustainable products like renewable fuels or plastics, which are essential to our daily lives. The temperature of the catalyst determines how efficiently molecules are converted and is therefore of crucial importance.

Catalyst Temperature Changes

Until now, measuring the temperature of catalysts has been highly challenging. As a result, it was generally assumed that this temperature remained constant during chemical processes. However, the CoCooN team at UGent has now succeeded in measuring the temperature of catalysts at the nanoscale—precisely at the location where the chemical reactions take place. Their findings show that the catalyst temperature changes significantly during chemical processes, by as much as 100°C, which can impact the process efficiency.

Nanoparticles and X-rays

The studied catalyst is a powder onto which nanoparticles are anchored. These nanoparticles, consisting of a limited number of atoms, were used to convert the greenhouse gases CO₂ and methane into syngas (a mixture of CO and hydrogen), which serves as a key building block for the chemical industry. The catalyst’s performance is determined by the local temperature of these nanoparticles, as this is where the chemical reactions occur, rather than by the powder onto which they are anchored.

To selectively measure the temperature of these nanoparticles, the CoCooN team (Profs. Filez, Dendooven, and Detavernier) developed an advanced X-ray-based method. “For medical purposes, X-ray imaging is commonly used to look inside the body and selectively reveal the bone structure,” explains Matthias Filez, first author of the article. “We have developed an advanced version of this X-ray technique to selectively probe the properties of nanoparticles and extract their temperature in real time during chemical reactions. To achieve this, we used a synchrotron to generate high-intensity X-rays.”

More Information

Read the full article in Nature Catalysis: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41929-025-01295-9

The authors of this work were funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen), the Special Research Fund of UGent (BOF), and the EU framework program HORIZON 2020. This research is a collaboration between the Department of Solid State Sciences (Faculty of Science) and the Laboratory for Chemical Technology (Faculty of Engineering) at UGent, the cMACS group (Faculty of Bioscience Engineering) at KU Leuven, and the ROCK beamline at the SOLEIL synchrotron (Paris, France).

Contact

Prof. Dr. ir. Matthias Filez
Prof. Dr. ir. Jolien Dendooven
Prof. Dr. Christophe Detavernier

Conformal Coating of Nanomaterials (CoCooN) group,
Department of Solid State Sciences, Faculty of Science, UGent