The speaker will try to list some weak points of the Czech research environment from his personal viewpoint. He will try to argue that on top of insufficient financing,other important issues involve fragmentation of research (too many universities with too many  faculties, too many study programs, too many institutes of the Academy); separation of executive power and responsibilities and poorly understood academic freedom; complicated legal system, fear of changes and prevailing inbreeding in the Czech Academia.

Collectively, these factors lead to continuous lagging of Czech science behind EU/US standards. This situation, 35 years after the regime change and 20 years after entering the EU is not acceptable and needs to change.

Several well known and already tested pathways to excellence will be reviewed and some positive examples shown.

We can and ought to do better.

Mechanochemistry is a topic of high current interest and has been used for the synthesis of many different materials. Especially if done in ball mills, it is an excellent method for applications in catalysis, both in the synthesis of catalytic materials and in the catalytic reaction itself. 

Ball milling approaches can be used for the synthesis of supported catalysts in a very simple manner by just mixing support and macroscopic metal powder, followed by milling. This does not only result in the formation of nanometer sized metal particles on the support, but also unusual alloys, which are hardly accessible by other methods, can be prepared. Ball milling can also lead to the conversion between polymorphs, and one of the most striking examples is the synthesis of corundum with very high surface area by the mechanochemically driven dehydrative phase transformation of boehmite, which, incidentally, can also be used to synthesize rare materials in the aluminum-oxygen-hydrogen system. The a-alumina thus produced is highly stable and is useful in different catalytic transformations. 

Also catalytic reactions themselves can be driven by ball milling. This has been shown for a number of different reactions, such as CO-oxidation, preferential CO-oxidation in hydrogen, depolymerization of different polymers, or the chlorination of methane. The most spectacular examples for a catalytic reaction in a ball mill is the continuous synthesis of ammonia from the elements at atmospheric pressure and room temperature over an iron catalyst modified by metallic cesium.

The presentation will give an overview over different aspects of mechanochemistry in catalysis and also touch the issue of scaling up milling processes.

Terrestrial Storage of Biomass (TSB) is a Negative Emission Technology for removing CO2 already in the atmosphere. Compared to other NETs, TSB is a natural, carbon- and energy-efficient, and low-cost option. Nature performs the work of removal by growing  biomass via photosynthesis. The key to permanent carbon sequestration is to bury the biomass in pits designed to minimize decomposition. Decomposition of wood follows the same path as decomposition of municipal waste in landfills. A review of the chemistry of biomass formation and decomposition leads to key concepts for TSB burial pit design. Decomposition is inherently slow due to the cross-linking and dense packing of cellulose. Like catalytic reactions, decomposition attack can only occur at the surface. Methane formation from even asmall amount of decomposition has been raised as a concern due to its high global  warming potential. This concern is shown to be unfounded due to a great difference in time constants for methane formation and its removal from the air by ozone oxidation. The small extent of woody biomass decomposition is spread over hundreds to thousands of years. However, methane has a short lifetime in air of only about 12 years. A model that couples the exceedingly slow rate of methane formation with the fast
removal by oxidation predicts that methane will peak at a very small fraction of the buried biomass carbon within about 10 years and then rapidly decay towards zero. The implication is that no additional equipment needs to be added to TSB to collect and burn
the methane as is done in municipal landfills.

Nanoporous catalysts are applied in a broad range ofchemical conversions. Often, however, low catalyst effectiveness factors may result, if mass-transfer limitations exist. Additional pore systems with larger dimensions in the macro- and mesoporous range may help to increase accessibility and mass-transfer to and away from the catalytically active sites. This presentation will highlightseveral examples in the field of catalysis over hierarchically structured materials. In particular, the role of diffusion forchemical reactions occurring on and in hierarchical nanoporous catalysts will be emphasized. First, microporous catalysts with a secondary “auxiliary” system of larger, mainly mesopores and, thus, improved catalyticactivity or stability will be treated.

The discussion will involve the transport scenarios of fast and slow molecular exchange, accessibility of active sites as well as the potential influence of surface barriers on the prevailing transport properties within the catalysts. Secondly, the potential of  ntroducing larger (macro)pores and optimizing the geometry of hierarchical pore systems for the use in heterogeneous catalysis will be outlined. Considerable rate enhancements can be achieved, e.g., for the selective catalytic reduction of NO with NH3 over  eso-/macroporous V2O5/TiO2 catalysts, based on theoretical evidence, or for the methanation of CO2 over Ni on over meso/macroporous Al2O3 monoliths. Finally, future challenges will be derived enabling a rational design of catalysts with complex  ierarchical pore systems based on advanced experimental and theoretical methods to study molecular diffusion and conversion.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) represent a group of synthetic chemicals that have garnered considerable attention in recent years due to their widespread use and persistent presence in the environment. These compounds, often referred to as "forever chemicals," are renowned for their resistance to degradation, posing significant challenges for environmental and human health. PFAS demonstrate notable diversity in their physical and chemical properties, which are contingent upon factors such as the type of the polar head group and length of the perfluorinated non-polar tail. Such diverse chemical and physical attributes, combined with their high mobility in soil and ground, render the traditional water treatment technologies ineffective for the removal of PFAS from water.

My research group has been studying the adsorption of PFAS from water in porous materials, including polymers, metal-organic frameworks, zeolites, and covalent organic frameworks, by employing advanced molecular simulation techniques. In my seminar, I will present our recent research on the effects of surface thermodynamics, fluorinated tail length, and acid head group type on the kinetics and energetics of PFAS adsorption in hydrophobic zeolites, using enhanced sampling methods and ab initio molecular dynamics. Time permitting, I will also briefly discuss our ongoing research on machine learning-assisted exploration of covalent organic frameworks for the removal of short-chain PFAS from water.

We warmly invite all students and attendees to join the presentation competition for Master’s and Ph.D. students of our department! Come support your colleagues, get inspired by their research projects, and participate in discussions with experts in the field. The conference will be held on the 11th of February in the lecture hall CH2.

For more details, visit https://physchem.cz/news/cnf2025/.

After a short introduction highlighting the current importance of zeolites in oil refining and petrochemistry, I will introduce the "Zeolite Crystal Engineering" as practiced in Caen. Nanosized zeolites are just one facet of Zeolite Crystal Engineering where the properties of a particular structure are tuned to meet the requirements of specific applications.

Nanozeolites are not only a laboratory invention but a commercial reality that found its place in catalytic processes and separations by adsorption. However, as potentially new applications of zeolites in the energy transition will push them outside their current comfort zone (i.e. working at high T in very endothermic reactions or working in hot water conditions), their resilience to extreme environment will be tested.

I will use two examples, one in catalysis (CH4 upgrading to H2 and aromatics) and one in adsorption (selective CO2 adsorption from a CH4/CO2 mixture) to highlight their potential and illustrate the challenges encountered.

Finally, I will show promising results leading to the use of nanozeolites in glioblastoma (a debilitating form of brain cancer) theragnostic.