Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, RMIT University, 124 LaTrobe Street, 3000 Melborune, Victoria
Liquid metal alloys are emerging as a powerful and unconventional platform for heterogeneous catalysis. Their fluid nature enables self-renewing catalytic interfaces, resistance to deactivation, and reactivity that can be precisely tuned through compositional design - properties that solid catalysts struggle to match. This talk presents work from the Liquid Metal Research Group at RMIT University on the application of gallium-based liquid metal alloys to a suite of reactions relevant to clean energy and sustainable chemical production.
Across transformations including ammonia synthesis, CO₂ conversion, alkane dehydrogenation, and more, liquid metal alloys offer a compelling alternative to conventional catalytic materials. The ability to dissolve and dynamically redistribute catalytically active elements within a liquid matrix unlocks synergistic effects between metals that are individually poor catalysts - a principle demonstrated recently in Nature Catalysis for ammonia synthesis. Reaction design and scalability are also discussed.
This body of work illustrates the broad potential of liquid metals to underpin a new generation of energy-efficient, low-emission chemical processes.