Calorimetric metal vapor adsorption energies for characterizing industrial catalyst support materials
Many important catalysts and electro-catalysts for energy and environmental technologies involve late transition metal atoms and nanoparticles dispersed across the surface of high-surface-area support materials, for example, oxide nanoparticles. The surface reactivity and long-term stability against deactivation of these materials depends strongly on the strength of bonding of the metal atom and nanoparticles to the support surface. Here, we introduce a novel calorimetry method that implements a LiTaO3 crystal for heat detection and extends metal adsorption calorimetry to surfaces of nanomaterials that are deposited from liquid solutions, as is typical when preparing industrial catalyst supports. This allows one to measure the strength of metal atom bonding and the adhesion energy of metal nanoparticles to clean surfaces of technologically relevant catalyst supports. We demonstrate that here by measuring the heat of Ag vapor adsorption onto the clean surfaces of high-surface-area TiO2 anatase powdered support materials (i.e., 5-nm-diameter nanoparticles). These heats of adsorption show a pulse-to-pulse standard deviation of only 9.3 kJ/mol (3.3%) for pulses containing only 1% of a monolayer of Ag vapor, with potential for a 5-fold reduction in noise if used with another metal evaporator. The calorimeter was also proven to work well measuring heats of Ag adsorption on calcium niobate(001) nanosheets deposited as thin films from liquid solution. Here, this calorimeter opens up the possibility of using metal adsorption calorimetry to screen catalyst support materials for the strengths with which they bind metal atoms and metal nanoparticles, offering new opportunities to discover better support materials or for basic scientific study of structure / function relationships with respect to metal / support bond energies.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Chemical Sciences, Geosciences & Biosciences Division; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- FG02-96ER14630
- OSTI ID:
- 1774925
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1810924
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Catalysis, Vol. 392; ISSN 0021-9517
- Publisher:
- ElsevierCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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