Comparison between X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy, Anomalous Wide Angle X-ray Scattering, Anomalous Small Angle X-ray Scattering, and Diffraction Anomalous Fine Structure Techniques Applied to Nanometer-Scale Metallic Clusters

Abstract

The emergence of the synchrotron radiation center in the past decade has resulted in a tremendous development of various techniques. XAS is an efficient tool for describing local organization in materials such as nanometer-scale metallic clusters but is insensitive to polydispersity. Ab initio calculations of the diffraction diagram show clearly that the crystallographic network as well as the distribution of the two metals inside the species can also be found. Near the diffraction peak (0,0,0), information regarding the size distribution and the morphology as well as the distribution of the metals inside the cluster can be obtained through a so-called Debye function analysis. For the DAFS technique, a wedding between diffraction and absorption, ab initio calculations will allow us to underline its advantages and its limitations. Finally, a synthesis of all the information given by these techniques is made in order to define a methodology in the building of a structural model.

Diffraction techniques and vibrational spectroscopy opportunities to characterise bones

“…Regarding nanometre-scale materials, numerous academic and industrial laboratories have pursued research of such nanometrescale entities [41]. This research has profited from an increasing experimental effort, leading to elegant experiments aimed at characterising and understanding several physical-chemical processes playing an important role in physics, chemistry and in biology.…”

Structural Characterization of Supported Platinum Carbonyl Clusters by X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy

“…The interatomic distances are taken from the crystal analysis in ref 4. In this paper, structural properties were investigated by X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) 20 to better understand the specific catalytical activity of Chini clusters. This method is especially useful for the local structure analysis of very small metal particles, 21 which is difficult by other techniques.…”

Anomalous small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering and X-ray absorption spectroscopy for Pt and Pt–Ru nanoparticles

“…Furthermore, the complementary technique of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) can provide the local atomic structure of the nanoparticles from extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) (Liu et al, 2005). Combining the scattering tools and EXAFS, all based on X-ray resonance, one can obtain integrated structural information for the catalyst nanoparticles of interest, as demonstrated in several reports (Bazin et al, 1997(Bazin et al, , 2002Vad et al, 2002;Brumberger et al, 2005). In this study, we apply ASAXS, AWAXS and EXAFS to characterize the structures of the two kinds of catalyst nanoparticles, Pt nanoparticles supported on carbon black and Pt-Ru nanoparticles without the support of carbon black.…”

“…To extract details of the structure and structural changes of embedded monometallic or bimetallic catalyst nanoparticles, including shape, size, crystalline structure and atomic distribution, during the process of, for instance, thermal annealing or electrochemical reduction, anomalous small-angle X-ray scattering (ASAXS) and anomalous wide-angle X-ray scattering (AWAXS) have been shown to be effective methods (Haubold et al, 1997(Haubold et al, , 2003Bazin et al, 1997;Adora et al, 2004), due to the selective sensitivity of the probes to the individual components (atoms) of the nanoparticles, when X-ray energy is tuned close to the characteristic absorption edge of the atoms in the nanoparticles. Furthermore, the complementary technique of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) can provide the local atomic structure of the nanoparticles from extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) (Liu et al, 2005).…”