Plasma catalysis: Knowledge gaps towards creating real synergy

Presentation from Prof. Annemie Bogaerts at the UK Catalysis Hub summer conf 2025. Plasma catalysis is gaining increasing interest for green chemistry applications, but the underlying mechanisms are far from understood, and plasma-catalyst synergy is not always observed. Hence, there is a need for better insights in the current limitations, and especially how to overcome them, in order to make progress in this emerging field. This talk will present some insights obtained already in the past years, based on modeling and experiments, but it will also discuss critical limitations, such as a lack of insight in the optimal catalyst material tailored to the plasma environment, the fact that plasma conditions might not yet be tuned well enough to the catalyst needs, and the need for improved plasma reactor design with better contact between plasma and catalyst, for which we will give some suggestions for improvement. Finally, we will briefly discuss other plasma-material combinations that can improve the performance of plasma-based gas conversion.