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.
Biography
Annemie Bogaerts (age 53) studied at the University of Antwerp. She obtained her master in chemistry in 1993, and her PhD in chemistry in 1996. She is full professor at the University of Antwerp since 2012. She is the head of the research group PLASMANT, which she started “from scratch”, and which currently counts about 50 members. Her research focuses on plasma chemistry, plasma reactor design and plasma-surface interactions, by experiments and modeling, for various applications, but mostly for sustainable chemistry (gas conversion, electrification of chemical reactions, plasma catalysis) and medicine (cancer treatment and virus inactivation).
She has above 700 peer-reviewed publications since 1995, and about 36,000 citations, with a H-index of 94 (Web of Science) (above 48,000 citations and H-index of 110 in Google Scholar). She has above 200 invited lectures at international conferences (since 1998) and above 80 invited seminars at universities/institutes (since 1995), in various countries. She was the supervisor of 67 finished PhD theses (since 2005), and is now supervising 30 PhD students (incl. several joint PhD students), and 15 postdocs.
She is in the editorial board of 15 different journals, and was/is guest editor of 24 special issues in several journals. She also organized several conferences, and received more than 30 prestigious awards.
She was member of the Board of Directors of the International Plasma Chemistry Society (IPCS; ca 600 members; 2014-2023), Vice-president of the IPCS (2020-2022) and President of the IPCS (2022-2023), and she is member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Plasma Medicine (ISPM; ca 400 members) since 2025. She is alsomember of the Academia Europaea (since 2011), and of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts (since 2012). Finally, she has a prestigious ERC Synergy Grant, and an ERC Proof of Concept Grant.