Application of Infrared Spectroscopy in Catalysis: Impacts on Catalysts’ Selectivity

Catalysis plays an important role in sustainable chemistry, enabling the development of more efficient processes by minimizing the consumption of energy and reducing the generation of by-products. The design of efficient catalysts is a key point in this respect, where spectroscopy confers fundamental knowledge at the molecular scale. Among the different spectroscopies, infrared (IR) spectroscopy is of great interest, enabling information about the nature of active species and the reaction mechanism, leading to precise structure-activity correlations, which are a key point in the design of new catalysts. Moreover, the dynamic behavior of the catalysts under working conditions can be also monitored by IR spectroscopy, where structural modifications of working catalysts have strong repercussion in catalysis. In this chapter, interesting examples will be discussed, related to industrial relevant processes, like Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, ethylene oligomerization, synthesis of aniline from nitrocompounds, and the dehydration of aldoximes to nitriles