Expanding the toolbox for development of metal-based dual-functional catalytic membranes.

Catalytic membranes offer opportunities to develop modular, process-intensified units. Dual-functional materials, which integrate reactive and separation components in a single material, could play an important role in enabling them. Adapting the various characterization tools that are used to analyze the structures of metal-based catalysts to these integrated structures could provide vital information for their design and implementation. In this perspective, we highlight the ways in which these tools can be used to analyze nonreactive membranes and non-integrated systems where the catalyst and the membrane operate as two separate units. A methodology developed to analyze these comparatively simpler systems could be subsequently extended to integrated dual-functional catalytic membranes. Thus, researchers from the catalysis and membranes communities can work together in a way that will not only lead to fundamental advancements in our understanding of catalytic membranes but also enable their transformation into real, scalable process-intensified units.