About
The Max Planck Cardiff Centre on the Fundamentals of Heterogeneous Catalysis (FUNCAT) opened in 2019 to facilitate collaborative research with Max Planck Institutes around the world.
Our team of over twenty researchers focus on three research areas:
- From single site to particles.
- Acetylene as a feedstock for chemical production.
- The importance of dynamics.
Within these areas, our research covers carbon dioxide reduction, water electrolysis, hydrogen peroxide synthesis, ammonia synthesis, acetylene chemistry, mechanochemistry, and bimetallic particles.
International collaboration
The university has a history of world-class research into heterogeneous catalysis in the Cardiff Catalysis Institute. The team at the Max Planck Centre (MPC) work closely with three organisations with world-leading discoveries in heterogeneous catalysis and how catalysis can support sustainability technology in the modern chemical industry:
- the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (CEC)
- the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (FHI)
- the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (KOFO)
Working together allows us to share our infrastructure, materials, and research equipment, and support our transition to sustainability. It also enables us to support our researchers’ career advancement through a collaborative research culture across different organisations.
Our work involves 20-25 researchers across the Centre, Cardiff Catalysis Institute, and our Max Planck Institute partners. We collaborate across our research themes, exchanging catalyst samples and research data.
In April 2022, we conducted our first interactive research meeting at the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) in Berlin. Over 40 team members from the partnership attended, and since then, researchers have been moving between partner organisations as part of our joint research project. A Viewpoint Article on our research direction was published in Angewandte Chemie in November 2022.