Wrocław, Poland, April 29-30, 2025
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Johan Bergsma is a postdoctoral researcher in the Heterogeneous Catalysis and Sustainable Chemistry group at the University of Amsterdam. His research involves developing computational models to study zeolite formation. He received his PhD in 2019 under Prof. F.Leermakers, focusing on dendrimers and telechelic polymer micelles using self-consistent field theory and Monte Carlo methods. From 2021 to 2023, he worked at the CECAM Institute at EPFL on the OPTIMADE protocol for exchanging chemical structure and simulation data. Outside academia, Johan has served as a board member for the youth association Unitas and the art-house cinema Movie-W.
Lecture title:
Unraveling complexity in zeolite synthesis
With the shift from fossil to bio-Unraveling complexity in zeolite synthesisbased feedstock, new synthesis pathways are needed and zeolite catalysts could play an important role. Currently, only ~250 zeolites are known. Theoretically, there could however be 100.000’s of zeolite structures, so many useful zeolites are probably still undiscovered. The zeolite formation process is, however, not well understood, limiting our ability to synthesize more.
Our goal is therefore to better understand how zeolites form and ultimately to use this insight to discover new zeolite synthesis pathways.
We started by creating a model with the minimal complexity needed to form zeolites.
With this model, we can already observe the spontaneous formation of zeolite cages as a function of structure directing agent(SDA) size as well as various zeolite substructures, and the nucleation of LTA and AST zeolites. Over time we plan to increase the realism of the model so we can more accurately predict which SDA and synthesis conditions are needed to synthesize a specific zeolite.
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