The preparation of heterogeneous catalysts is a major challenge for both academia and industry for the development of more active and selective formulations. However, despite numerous recent conceptual developments, the elaboration of catalysts relies too often on a trial and error strategy while the rational design of heterogeneous catalysts remains still a distant goal both at the laboratory and industrial scales. This difficulty may be explained in part by the need to address this area through a multidisciplinary approach combining chemistry and physical chemistry of surfaces, inorganic chemistry, colloid chemistry, materials chemistry (metal oxides, porous materials...), molecular spectroscopy and, last but not least, chemical engineering for the more applied aspects of shaping and up-scaling.

The CatPrep summer school, open to the European scientific community, wishes to provide a general framework for teaching the fundamental and applied concepts of catalyst preparation. It will give a comprehensive overview of the fundamental knowledge required for the controlled elaboration of heterogeneous catalytic materials and will present the industrial requirements for large-scale synthesis.

The main objective is to provide a common conceptual framework to the scientific community working in the field or at the periphery of heterogeneous catalysts preparation in order to:

1. Enable junior researchers to have a more rational view of the area in which they perform their research
2. Facilitate interactions between researchers by use of a common language and common concepts
3. Promote the dialogue between academia and industry in a highly specialized scientific area often protected by patents.

The program will be divided into six parts with about 50% of academic and 50% industrial lectures : 

1. Fundamental bases (introduction; physicochemistry of surfaces)
2. Support and porous materials synthesis
3. Active phase deposition (impregnation, precipitation, activation : drying, calcination, activation) 
4. Industrial requirements (up-scaling, regeneration)
5. Other directions (colloidal methods, automated and high-throughput synthesis, characterisation methods, surface molecular chemistry, computational approaches)
6. Visit of the SYSPROD up-scaling platform at IFPEN near Lyon

The school will take place over 5 days from Sunday afternoon to Friday after lunch time, with 14 lectures of 1h30 and with time dedicated to questions, discussions as well as a poster session for allowing all participants to present their own research problematic, round table debates, practical experiments and a visit of pilot site dedicated to up-scaling catalyst preparation.

Participation in CatPrep Summer School requires a basic knowledge in inorganic chemistry and chemistry of materials common to all academic training without specific prerequisites. Each course will follow a didactic progression with reminders of background knowledge at the beginning of each lectures. An introductory lecture will set the essential concepts of catalysis and heterogeneous catalysts to allow a multidisciplinary audience to understand the challenges of the discipline.

CATALYSIS, HETEROGENEOUS CATALYSTS, SYNTHESIS, REACTIVITY, SURFACE CHEMISTRY, INORGANIC OXIDE MATERIALS , POROUS MATERIALS, NANOPARTICLES, UP-SCALING, AUTOMATED AND HIGH-THROUGHPUT SYNTHESIS