What is it about?
Adsorbate at the surface of metal nanoparticle modifies the crystal surface tension. The paper proves that the effect can be measured by in situ powder diffraction via detection of minute peak shifts. It can be used to measure strength of interaction but also an occurrence of the surface reconstruction. Together with monitoring the peak intensity and width this can provide unique insight into surface reactivity of nanocrystals.
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Why is it important?
The proposed technique provides a sample average picture of the catalyst surface evolution during chemical reaction. It can even show an average evolution of the crystal shape during the reaction- more sensitively than ETEM observations on a single crystallite. It is a unique technique for nanocrystals where the surface reconstruction phenomena meet less entropy barrier than for bulky crystal.
Perspectives
The method is developed during more than decade in my Lab. Together with developed by us atomistic simulation tools it offers unique tools to understand in situ evolution of nanocrystalline powder diffraction pattern. More importantly that many standard tools of powder diffraction become not applicable for a very small crystals.
Professor ZBIGNIEW Antoni KASZKUR
Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Powder diffraction in studies of nanocrystal surfaces: chemisorption on Pt, Journal of Applied Crystallography, November 2014, International Union of Crystallography,
DOI: 10.1107/s1600576714023917.
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