A new scanning tunneling microscope reactor used for high-pressure and high-temperature catalysis studies Review of Scientific Instruments 79, 084101 (2008) To enable atomic-scale observations of model catalysts under conditions approaching those used by the chemical industry, we have developed a second generation, high-pressure, high-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (STM): the ReactorSTM. It consists of a compact STM scanner, of which the tip extends into a 0.5 ml reactor flow-cell, that is housed in a ultra-high vacuum (UHV) system. The STM can be operated from UHV to 6 bars and from room temperature up to 600 K. A gas mixing and analysis system optimized for fast response times allows us to directly correlate the surface structure observed by STM with reactivity measurements from a mass spectrometer. The in situ STM experiments can be combined with ex situ UHV sample preparation and analysis techniques, including ion bombardment, thin film deposition, low-energy electron diffraction and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
BINoculars is a tool for data reduction and analysis of large sets of surface diffraction data that have been acquired with a two-dimensional X-ray detector. The intensity of each pixel of a two-dimensional detector is projected onto a three-dimensional grid in reciprocal-lattice coordinates using a binning algorithm. This allows for fast acquisition and processing of high-resolution data sets and results in a significant reduction of the size of the data set. The subsequent analysis then proceeds in reciprocal space. It has evolved from the specific needs of the ID03 beamline at the ESRF, but it has a modular design and can be easily adjusted and extended to work with data from other beamlines or from other measurement techniques. This paper covers the design and the underlying methods employed in this software package and explains how BINoculars can be used to improve the workflow of surface X-ray diffraction measurements and analysis.
An Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) has been integrated in a miniature high-pressure flow reactor for in-situ observations of heterogeneous catalytic reactions under conditions similar to those of industrial processes. The AFM can image model catalysts such as those consisting of metal nanoparticles on flat oxide supports in a gas atmosphere up to 6 bar and at a temperature up to 600 K, while the catalytic activity can be measured using mass spectrometry. The high-pressure reactor is placed inside an Ultrahigh Vacuum (UHV) system to supplement it with standard UHV sample preparation and characterization techniques. To demonstrate that this instrument successfully bridges both the pressure gap and the materials gap, images have been recorded of supported palladium nanoparticles catalyzing the oxidation of carbon monoxide under high-pressure, high-temperature conditions.
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