A novel microfabricated chemical reactor for highly sensitive measurements of catalytic activity and surface kinetics is presented. The reactor is fabricated in a silicon chip and is intended for gas-phase reactions at pressures ranging from 0.1 to 5.0 bar. A high sensitivity is obtained by directing the entire gas flow through the catalyst bed to a mass spectrometer, thus ensuring that nearly all reaction products are present in the analyzed gas flow. Although the device can be employed for testing a wide range of catalysts, the primary aim of the design is to allow characterization of model catalysts which can only be obtained in small quantities. Such measurements are of significant fundamental interest but are challenging because of the low surface areas involved. The relationship between the reaction zone gas flow and the pressure in the reaction zone is investigated experimentally. A corresponding theoretical model is presented, and the gas flow through an on-chip flow-limiting capillary is predicted to be in the intermediate regime. The experimental data for the gas flow are found to be in good agreement with the theoretical model. At typical experimental conditions, the total gas flow through the reaction zone is around 3 ϫ 10 14 molecules s −1 , corresponding to a gas residence time in the reaction zone of about 11 s. To demonstrate the operation of the microreactor, CO oxidation on low-area platinum thin film circles is employed as a test reaction. Using temperature ramping, it is found that platinum catalysts with areas as small as 15 m 2 are conveniently characterized with the device.

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Anodic bonding of silicon to glass always involves heating the glass and device to high temperatures so that cations become mobile in the electric field. We present a simple way of bonding thin silicon samples to borosilicate glass by means of heating from the glass side while locally cooling heat-sensitive areas from the silicon side. Despite the high thermal conductivity of silicon, this method allows a strong anodic bond to form just millimeters away from areas essentially at room temperature.

A novel nanoparticulate catalyst of copper (Cu) and ruthenium (Ru) was designed for low-temperature ammonia oxidation at near-stoichiometric mixtures using a bottom-up approach. A synergistic effect of the two metals was found. An optimum CuRu catalyst presents a reaction rate threefold higher than that for Ru and forty-fold higher than that for Cu. X-ray absorption spectroscopy suggests that in the most active catalyst Cu forms one or two monolayer thick patches on Ru and the catalysts are less active once 3D Cu islands form. The good performance of the tuned Cu/Ru catalyst is attributed to changes in the electronic structure, and thus the altered adsorption properties of the surface Cu sites.