Matthew Montemore
Tulane University of Louisiana, LA·Engineering·Early-career
Catalysts are materials that speed up chemical reactions. They underpin fuel and chemical manufacturing, but many waste energy, cost a lot, or make unwanted by-products.
- Fields
Engineering
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
heterogeneous catalysis
single-atom alloys
dual-atom alloys
- Grants
- 4 known grants, through Mar 2029
What they work on
- Screen alloy-host single-atom alloys with machine learning and density functional theory to find stable, active catalysts for oxidation and alkane conversion, then move top candidates to surface-science and nanoparticle tests.
- Predict stable dual-atom alloy sites, two different metal atoms embedded in a host surface, with low energy barriers for target reactions using machine learning and DFT, for synthesis and testing by Tufts collaborators.
- Determine how the identity and arrangement of isolated early transition metal atoms in copper, silver, or gold hosts control selective oxygen removal from biomass-derived molecules, using surface experiments, spectroscopy, and modeling.
- Identify which features of "soft reductants" create and maintain active sites on tungsten and molybdenum olefin metathesis catalysts, combining reactor studies and operando spectroscopy such as AP-XPS with computation.
More about the research
These projects ask how the arrangement of individual atoms on a catalyst's surface controls what it does, and how to design better catalysts on purpose instead of by trial and error. A recurring approach pairs density functional theory (DFT), a quantum-mechanical method for computing how molecules bind to surfaces, with machine learning to screen many candidate materials. The best candidates are then tested in experiments, often by collaborators.
Why it matters
Better catalysts could make chemical manufacturing more efficient and lower its greenhouse gas emissions, particularly for oxidation and alkane conversion, which account for hundreds of megatons of emissions. This work may help turn plant biomass and plastic waste into fuels, aromatic chemicals, and plastic building blocks, supporting U.S. energy security. Design rules for alloy catalysts could also point to cheaper alternatives to precious-metal catalysts.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Collaborative Research: Dilute Alloying to Tune Early Transition Metal Reactivity for Selective Hydrodeoxygenation
NSF · Apr 2026 – Mar 2029
CAREER: Computational Design of Single-Atom Sites in Alloy Hosts as Stable and Efficient Catalysts
NSF · Apr 2024 – Mar 2029
Collaborative Research: Elucidation of descriptors that control heterogeneous olefin metathesis site creation through reduction
NSF · May 2025 – Apr 2028
Closest labs
Nathaniel Eagan
Tufts University, MA·Chemistry
Synthesize copper-based trimetallic single-atom alloy catalysts with two isolated dopant metals using controlled colloidal methods, and characterize their structures with a range of analytical techniques.
Suljo Linic
University of Michigan, MI·Engineering
Synthesize plasmonic single atom alloy nanoparticles, silver or gold particles with isolated platinum, palladium, rhodium or ruthenium atoms at the surface, and characterize their geometry.
David Flaherty
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Chemistry
Synthesize gold-rich alloy nanoparticles containing palladium, platinum or rhodium at diameters of about 1–2, 6 and 10 nm, and track how gas adsorption and reactions restructure them over extended periods.
The school
Tulane University of Louisiana: 17 labs on PI Pages, $276M a year on research, 187 research doctorates a year.
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