Dear colleagues, collaborators, emeriti, old and potential future colleagues and collaborators,
Year 2019 approaches its end, and it is a good time to look back on the activities of the Aalto Catalysis group in the past year.
A slogan for the undersigned and the Catalysis group this year has been “more openness in science and teaching”. The quest for more openness resulted in a nice recognition with Aalto CHEM’s award Educational action of the year 2019 for online lecture recordings. There is more on the justification (directly by students!), background and extended thanks related to the recognition in a recent blog post in Catalysis Professor’s Open: https://blogs.aalto.fi/catprofopen/2019/12/13/online-lecture-recordings-are-educational-action-of-the-year-2019-aalto-chem/. We will continue to work for more openness in science and teaching in 2020.
Publication-wise, year 2019 has been nice for the group. In total eight publications are out at the end of the year, listed at the end of this message. Additionally, five articles are “in the pipeline”, hopefully to be published in 2019 after peer review is finished. The group members have given several contributed/invited talks and poster presentations at various national and international conferences; events especially to note were e.g. the ALD fundamentals workshop in July in Delft, and the post-EuropaCat Catalysis Connected event in Utrecht in August.
Characteristic for year 2019 in our group have also been:
- The creation of an Instagram account for the group @AaltoCatalysis, to complement our Twitter account, for more visibility towards students
- Starting of a new collaborative “HDN Cat” project with Neste on hydrodenitrogenation. This project is among the largest at Aalto CHEM school and includes funding for a postdoc (Dr. Aitor Arandia, also the project manager) and two doctoral students for 2+2 years. We are looking forward to welcome new group members in January!
- Five-week visit by Prof. Puurunen to Delft University of Technology in the summer, hosted by Prof. Ruud van Ommen
- Organization of the November Networking – ALD at Aalto University event on November 29, forty-five years after the first atomic layer deposition (epitaxy) patent was filed by the Finnish inventor of ALD, Tuomo Suntola. Here, Prof. van Ommen gave an excellent lecture on the status of atomic layer deposition on particles.
In Feb 2020, I will have been for three years at Aalto CHEM (first part-time for 6 months). The publications record tells in its own way of the transition in research topics. Acquiring the first funding is among the challenges for new professors. I have been grateful for Neste Corporation on the trust with the HDN Cat project; this is very important for my new group. Also, yesterday, Academy of Finland decided positively on our COOLCAT consortium with University of Jyväskylä in the C1 value call. An excellent start for 2020.
With these thoughts, I wish You a peaceful and joyous Christmas time and best of success for the coming year!
Riikka Puurunen
| 2019 | Coronado I., Arandia A., Reinikainen M., Karinen R., Puurunen R.L., Lehtonen J. | Kinetic modelling of the aqueous-phase reforming of Fischer-Tropsch water over ceria-zirconia supported nickel-copper catalyst | Catalysts 9 (2019) art. 936 | |
| 2019 | Karsten Arts, Mikko Utriainen, Riikka L. Puurunen, Wilhelmus M. M. (Erwin) Kessels, Harm C. M. Knoops | Film Conformality and Extracted Recombination Probabilities of O Atoms during Plasma-assisted Atomic Layer Deposition of SiO2, TiO2, Al2O3 and HfO2 | Journal of Physical Chemistry C 123 (2019) 27030 | |
| 2019 | Alireza M. Kia, Clemens Mart, Sajjad Esmaeili, Nora Haufe, Mikko Utriainen, Riikka L. Puurunen, Wenke Weinreich | ToF-SIMS 3D Analysis of Thin Films Deposited in High Aspect Ratio Structures via Atomic Layer Deposition and Chemical Vapor Deposition | Nanomaterials 9 (2019) art. 1035 | https://doi.org/10.3390/nano9071035 |
| 2019 | K. Arts, V. Vandalon, R. L. Puurunen, M. Utriainen, F. Gao, W. M. M. Kessels, H. C. M. Knoops | Sticking probabilities of H2O and Al(CH3)3 during atomic layer deposition of Al2O3 extracted from their impact on film conformality. | Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A 37 (2019) art. 030908 | https://doi.org/10.1116/1.5093620 |
| 2019 | A. Arandia, I. Coronado, A. Remiro, A.G. Gayubo, M. Reinikainen | Aqueous-phase reforming of bio-oil aqueous fraction over Ni-based catalysts | International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 44 (2019) 13157-13168 | http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.04.007 |
| 2019 | J. L. González Escobedo, E. Mäkelä, A. Braunschweiler, J. Lehtonen, M. Lindblad, R.L. Puurunen, R. Karinen | Solvent-free Hydrodeoxygenation of γ-Nonalactone on Noble Metal Catalysts Supported on Zirconia | Topics in Catalysis 62 (2019) 724-737 | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11244-019-01161-6 |
| 2019 | V. Cremers, R. L. Puurunen, J. Dendooven | Conformality in atomic layer deposition: current status overview of analysis and modelling | Applied Physics Reviews 6 (2019) art. 021302 (43 p.) | https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5060967 |
| 2019 | P. Voigt, E. Haimi, J. Lahtinen, Y. W. Cheah, E. Mäkelä, T. Viinikainen, R. L. Puurunen, | Nickel Supported on Mesoporous Zirconium Oxide by Atomic Layer Deposition: Initial Fixed-Bed Reactor Study | Topics in Catalysis 62 (2019) 611-620 | http://doi.org/10.1007/s11244-019-01133-w |
