With the increasing demand to get through the bottle neck of designing and developing new catalysts for the field of energy and fuel, dramatic improvements in research methodology which combines various complementary characterizations on the same sample under real reaction conditions are essential [1].  The operando method that establishes the relationship between structure and activity/selectivity was introduced at the beginning of this century. However, up to now, it is still at the very start of its development because great challenges for the reactors and combination of characterization methods also arise [2].  Our work has been focusing on the development of the operando XAFS-TEM-Raman method to establish structure-activity relationship in catalytic reactions. We demonstrate the method on the example of a portable micro-reactor that is compatible with the three techniques. The test system was the Pt/SiO2 nano-catalyst and the test reaction was the hydrogenation of ethylene. The TEM experiment was executed in the Center for Functional Nanomaterials of Brookhaven National Laboratory and the micro-XAFS was carried out at beamline X27A at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory.  Both experiments were conducted in operando, in identical conditions, and their results can be thus directly compared.[1]  M. A. Ba�ares, Catalysis Today, 100, 71 (2005).[2] J. Nelson, S. Misra, Y. Yang, A. Jackson, Y. Liu, H. Wang, H. Dai, J. C. Andrews, Y. Cui, M. F. Toney,  J. Am. Chem. Soc., 134, 6337 (2012).

Operando XAFS-TEM-Raman methodology for nanocatalysts

246th National Meeting (2013)

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