Ambient pressure x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (APXPS) is a technique that was pioneered more than 40 years ago by researchers in Sweden and the United Kingdom, but which experienced a relatively languishing existence before being powerfully revived in the beginning of this century with a start in Berkeley and Berlin. 15 years later, APXPS has found and proved its role as one of the primary experimental techniques for in situ and operando research into catalysis and many other areas. At present, the scope of APXPS is constantly being widened, and in the catalysis area one can witness e.g. the development away from simple model systems and towards real catalysts, away from the simplest of catalytic reactions and towards a much larger variety and complexity of chemical reactions, the development towards more advanced and specialised sample environments, towards the direct combination of APXPS with other in situ and operando methods, and towards achieving high temporal resolution with the goal of directly monitoring chemical dynamics.<br/>The Swedish national synchrotron radiation facility MAX IV Laboratory went into user operation recently, with the HIPPIE beamline for APXPS, as one of the very first beamlines, already accepting external users. The SPECIES beamline will follow after within some months’ time from now. Using data from these beamlines I will exemplify some of the developments mentioned above. In particular, I will discuss investigations ranging in complexity from the CO oxidation reaction via the preferential oxidation (PROX) of CO over Ir to the Sonogashira cross coupling reaction over a Au surface. Further, I will discuss the options for catalysis sample environments at the MAX IV APXPS beamlines, which range from a restricted-volume cell with a flow geometry to an electrochemistry setup for “dip-and-pull” experiments, and which, furthermore, allow to combine APXPS with both in situ mass spectrometry and PM-IRAS. I will also show that we now routinely can observe chemical dynamics with frame rates of 18 to 120 Hz in experiments that draw on both the excellent photon flux available at a fourth-generation synchrotron light source and the recent development of electron energy analyser technology.

Present and new frontiers in APXPS catalysis research: Examples from MAX IV

256th National Meeting (2018)

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