Application of scanning electron microscopy in catalysis

Abstract

A short survey of various information obtained by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in the investigation of heterogeneous catalysts and nano-structured materials have been presented. The capabilities of SEM analysis and its application in testing catalysts in different fields of heterogeneous catalysis are illustrated. The results encompass the proper way of catalyst preparation, the mechanism of catalyst active sites formation catalysts changes and catalyst degradation during their application in different chemical processes. Presented SEM pictures have been taken on a SEM JOEL ISM 35 over 25 years of studies in the field of heterogeneous catalysis

Effect of Oxalic Acid on Heat Pretreatment for Serpentine Carbonation

“…16) They reported the transformation of magnesium oxalate dihydrate into magnesium oxide at 430$590 C. The morphology of magnesium oxalate has been reported to be a sphere, 17) rod, 17) or cube. 18) Figure 2 shows SEM micrographs of samples after heat treatment at 200 C and 500 C. It can be seen that rod-type or cube-type magnesium oxalate particles with a size of approximately 2 mm were produced during the heat treatment at 200 C ( Fig. 2(a)).…”

Small-angle X-ray scattering intensity of multiscale models of spheres

“…The particles of support or active phases are often polydisperse, with a normal or lognormal distribution law depending on whether they are formed by coalescence or ripening (Granqvist & Buhrman, 1976;Datye et al, 2006). Morphological details of catalysts may be observed at the nanometre scale with transmission electron microscopy (Thomas & Terasaki, 2002) or electron tomography (Friedrich et al, 2009) and at the micrometre scale with scanning electron microscopy (Lomić et al, 2004), coupled or not with a focused ion beam (Witte et al, 2013). However, the extraction of a particle size distribution is tedious, and these techniques are often limited by their lack of representativeness.…”