Catalight─An Open-Source Automated Photocatalytic Reactor Package Illustrated through Plasmonic Acetylene Hydrogenation.

Abstract

An open-source and modular Python package, Catalight, is developed and demonstrated to automate (photo)catalysis measurements. (Photo)catalysis experiments require studying several parameters to evaluate performance, including the temperature, gas flow rate and composition, illumination power, and spectral profile. Catalight orchestrates measurements over this complicated parameter space and systematically stores, analyzes, and visualizes the results. To showcase the capabilities of Catalight, we perform an automated apparent activation barrier measurement of acetylene hydrogenation over a plasmonic AuPd catalyst on an Al₂O₃ support, simultaneously varying laser power, wavelength, and temperature in a multiday experiment controlled by a simple Python script. Our chemical results unexpectedly show an increased activation barrier upon light excitation, contrary to previous findings for other plasmonic reactions and catalysts. We show that the reaction rate order with respect to both acetylene and hydrogen remains unchanged upon illumination, suggesting that molecular surface coverage is not changed by light. By analyzing the inhomogeneity of the laser-induced heating, we attribute these results to a partial photothermal effect combined with a photochemical/hot electron-driven mechanism. Our findings highlight the capabilities of a new experiment automation tool; explore the photocatalytic mechanism for an industrially relevant reaction; and identify systematic sources of error in canonical photocatalysis experimental procedures.