Center for Functional Nanomaterials Seminar

Center for Functional Nanomaterials Seminar Caught in the Act! Live Observations of Catalysts Using High-pressure Scanning Probe Microscopy Irene M. N. Groot Leiden Institute of Physics and Leiden Institute of Chemistry, the Netherlands Friday, August 21, 2015 10:00 am Bldg. 735 â€" Conf. Rm. A Recently it has become clear that essential differences can exist between the behavior of catalysts under industrial conditions (high pressure and temperature) and the (ultra) high vacuum conditions of traditional laboratory experiments. Differences in structure, composition, reaction mechanism, activity, and selectivity have been observed. These observations indicated the presence of the so-called pressure gap, and made it clear that meaningful results can only be obtained at high pressures and temperatures. However, most of the techniques traditionally used to study catalysts and their reactions were designed to operate under (ultra) high vacuum conditions. To bridge the pressure gap, the last years have seen a tremendous effort in designing new instruments and adapting existing ones to be able to investigate catalysts in situ under industrially relevant conditions. This talk focuses on the development of scanning probe microscopy for operando observations of active model catalysts. In our group, we have developed set-ups that combine an ultrahigh vacuum environment for model catalyst preparation and characterization with a high-pressure flow reactor cell, integrated with either a scanning tunneling microscope or an atomic force microscope. With these set-ups we are able to perform atomic-scale investigations of well-defined model catalysts under industrial conditions. Additionally, we combine the structural information from scanning probe microscopy with time-resolved mass spectrometry measurements on the gas mixture that leaves the re