Date: Wednesday, February 15th, 2017 ​

Time: 11:00 AM 

Location: Building 4, Room 125

KAUST Catalysis Center (KCC) King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia 

Among various measurements techniques, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is an ex-tremely powerful tool for the identification of chemical composition and the determination of molecular structure. Because of its versatility it is widely applied in chemistry, materials sci-ence, and biomedical research. At KAUST, we boast an NMR lab housing 5 Solid State NMR spectrometers from Bruker include one of the world's first Bruker 900MHz Wide-Bore mag-nets and 1 DNP spectrometers coupled with a huge range of accessories that would allow break-through research. High resolutions NMR provide a range of exquisitely precise tools to characterize well-defined active sites in hetero-geneous catalysis. Implementation of high resolution and 2D solid state NMR techniques helped to identify surface structures at a molec-ular level, which is a key to implementing structure–reactivity relationships and rational developments in heterogeneous catalysis. It is clear that these methods also have the potential for extensive further developments and applica-tions, for example towards understanding more complex systems (complex oxide materials, active sites with paramagnetic or quadrupolar centres), probing the dynamics of surface species (access to mobility of active sites), and to monitor the active sites as a function of time. 2D high resolution and 2D spectra shows the power of this technique to characterize the well-defined heterogeneous catalysts prepared by surface organometallic chemistry.

 

Dr. Abou-hamad is in charge of Solid State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (two 400MHz, one 600 MHz, one 900MHz and one 950 MHz), Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP 400 MHz) and supervision of research projects. His research interests include in the design, develop and troubleshoot of new methods, analytical technique and

 implement pulse sequences in high resolution solid NMR and DNP methods including high-level advanced techniques and knowledge for extensive surface characterization.  Further, Dr. Abou-hamad has physics background and he studied by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) the Magnetic, Electronic and Dynamic properties of Carbon Nanotubes, peapods and derivatives. He has published over 60 papers in scientific journals, with an h-index of 13 in the field of NMR studies of catalysis and material Science.