Since there is an unmet need to develop a new type of barcodes to label each catalyst, and lots of catalysts can be evaluated simultaneously to save efforts, this article reports the establishment of a high-throughput evaluation system, in which a selected panel of phase change nanoparticles (PCMs) as thermal barcode was embedded into catalyst pellet.
Coke yield is a key measurement of catalyst performance and often used in catalyst selection; however, the existing methods for heterogeneous catalyst evaluations are limited by low-throughput, meaning each time only one catalyst can be tested. Barcodes have been used to tag products, but common barcodes attached on packing are not suitable for catalyst evaluation. In the system described in the current article, lots of catalysts could be evaluated in one reaction due to the large labeling capacity of the thermal barcode. After the reaction, coke formation was determined by thermogravimetric analysis, and the thermal barcode was decoded with a differential scanning calorimeter to correlate with the catalyst composition. (publisher abstract modified)