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| Bird/Stewart/Lightfoot Programs | |
| Bird/Stewart/Lightfoot Lecture, 2007-2008 |
Lecture by Flemming Besenbacher
Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center, University of Aarhus
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Room 1610 Engineering Hall
Refreshments at 3:45 p.m.
Lecture at 4:00 p.m.
For decades, single-crystal surfaces have been studied under ultrahigh vacuum conditions as model systems for elementary surface processes underlying phenomena such as heterogeneous catalysis, epitaxial growth, and corrosion. This “surface science approach” has contributed substantially to our understanding of the processes involved in catalysis, and has in some cases led to the design of improved catalysts. Recently, much attention has been paid to the so-called gaps between surface science and industrial catalysis: the pressure gap which arises because of the pressure difference between UHV base pressures and atmospheric pressure; and the structural gap relating to the difference in reactivity on single-crystal surfaces, as opposed to nanoclusters.
In this talk I will show how one can use the unique capabilities of Scanning Tunneling Microscopy to reveal fundamental processes in relation to catalysis. STM has proven to be a fascinating and powerful technique for revealing the atomic-scale realm of matter. The unique Aarhus STM allows us to record time-resolved, high-resolution STM images, visualized in the form of STM movies (see www.phys.au.dk/spm). I will show how we can obtain quantitative information on and unique insight into diffusion and transport phenomena associated with surface processes and nanostructures, and how atomic-scale studies may lead to design of improved catalysts.
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Flemming Besenbacher is a full professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Aarhus, where he received his D.Sc. His research activities include the development and use of scanning tunneling microscopy and other surface sensitive techniques to study clean and adsorbate-covered surfaces, as well as synthesis and characterization of nanostructures on surfaces. He is director and founder of the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center and head of the graduate school, a member of the Boards of Directors of the Carlsberg Foundation and Carlsberg Breweries A/S. He was vice-director of the Center for Atomic-scale Materials Physics (1993-2003) sponsored by the Danish National Research Foundation. His many awards include the NKT Prize (1995) from the Danish Physical Society for outstanding research in the area of scanning probe microscopy, the Danish Velux Award for outstanding achievements in natural and technical science, especially in the area of nanoscience, and the Grundfos Award (2006). In 2007, he was knighted by the Queen of Denmark and awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog. Also in 2007 he was awarded honorary professorships at four Chinese Universities: Henan, Tianjin, Jilin, and Huazhong Normal. He is a member of the Royal Danish Academy, the Max-Planck Institute for Solid State Research, and other prestigious Danish and international academies and societies. His more than 300 papers in international journals, including several in high impact journals such as Nature, Science, Physical Review Letters, and Angewandte Chemie, are highly cited.
As the chemical engineering profession developed in the first half of the 20th century, the concept of "unit operations" arose as the natural organizing principle in educating chemical engineers. Particularly in undergraduate education, underlying theories of mass, momentum and energy transfer were presented only to the extent necessary for a narrow range of applications. Following World War II, chemical engineers moved into a number of new areas in which problem definitions and solutions required a deeper knowledge of the fundamentals of transport phenomena than those provided in the textbooks on unit operations.
In the 1950's, R. Byron Bird, Warren E. Stewart, and Edwin N. Lightfoot stepped forward to develop an undergraduate course at the University of Wisconsin to integrate the teaching of fluid flow, heat transfer, and diffusion. From this beginning, they prepared the landmark textbook, Transport Phenomena, published in 1960 by John Wiley & Sons.
This textbook, referred to by generations of chemical engineers simply as BSL after its authors, would remain in print for 41 years and see five translations. BSL changed fundamentally the organizing principle in chemical engineering curricula worldwide. The enduring strength of BSL is testimony to the vision and attention to detail of its authors.
In "retirement," the three authors found time to thoroughly revise BSL, the second edition of which appeared in the summer of 2001. With new or revised discussions of such topics as two-phase systems, angular momentum, Taylor dispersion and turbulence, the revision promises to help prepare students well into the 21st century. The BSL Lecture was inaugurated in the fall of 2001 to honor the achievements of these outstanding chemical engineers.
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Copyright 2008 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System Date last modified: 05-Feb-2008 Date created: 05-Feb-2008 Content by: che@che.wisc.edu Accessibility Web services Thank you for visiting http://www.engr.wisc.edu/che/bsl2007-2008.html |