RSC Nanoscale – online special issue

Spectroscopy and scattering methods for chemistry

The topic of the latest virtual special issue of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Nanoscale focuses on the possible of new applications methods utilizing large scale facilities, to study the chemistry of materials. Prof. Kirsten M. Ø. Jensen (Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen), Prof. Dorota Koziej (Department of Physics, University of Hamburg), and MPI CEC Director Prof. Serena DeBeer (Department of Inorganic Spectroscopy) are guest editing this themed issue entitled „Spectroscopy and scattering for chemistry: New possibilities and challenges with large scale facilities”.  

This special online issue is a collection of original articles or reviews published recently in RSC Nanoscale, that highlights high quality new studies across nanosystems using spectroscopic and scattering techniques. Here, a particular focus was placed on studies that are taking advantage of in situ X-ray and/or neutron-based techniques at modern large-scale facilities like synchrotrons, neutron sources or Free Electron Lasers (FELs). The newest generation of such light or particle sources provide quite often a unique opportunity to study chemical systems with high energy-, temporal- or spatial-resolution. Thus, enabling the elucidation of mechanisms that lie behind catalytic cycles, gas storage processes, and conversion reactions in batteries or at thin films. The presented online themed collection arises from a successful symposium organized by the three guest editors during the 2019 European Material Research Society Spring Meeting. The presented research, as well as challenges with large scale facilities related to sample environment or instrumentations discussed there, encouraged the organizers to collect the latest contributions utilizing a wide variety of methods used now also in chemistry.

This is already a second joint guest editorial of Prof. DeBeer. In 2017, we reported about the virtual issue of Chemistry of Materials (News 09/2017), with themed articles collected together also with Prof. Koziej. The focus there was placed on the importance of the development of operando X-ray Spectroscopy of functional systems.

The collection also comprises a recent publication by the DeBeer group investigating the Dry Methane Reforming (DMF) reaction, in which CH4 and CO2 are converted to H2 and CO (so called syngas). This reaction is getting increasing attention as syngas can act as a building block that leads to the production of other chemicals inter alia liquid fuels. The efficiency of the reaction is limited due to undesired side reactions like carbon deposition. This also the case that occurs in a Ni-based catalyst, investigated by Abbas Beheshti Askari, a former PhD student in DeBeer’s group in collaboration with the group of Prof. Martin Muhler (Ruhr-University Bochum and Max-Planck Fellow) and coworkers from the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center in Taiwan. As previous studies showed metal alloying of this catalysts increases it catalytic activity. The researchers’ team focused on such system with a emphasizes on Co alloying, which was also found to be the most efficiently metal in promoting the DMR activity. By undertaking a combined high-resolution X-ray Emission and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy study to understand the synergistic interaction between Co and Ni in such a system, the group examined structural and electronic properties in an activated and reduced state of the catalysts as well as in situ under DMR conditions. These experiments showed distinct differences between the Ni-only and the Ni/Co catalyst. Namely, the presence of Co modulates the geometric and electronic structure of Ni, with the Ni being more oxidized in the presence of Co.  This study emphasizes the potential of X­‑ray spectroscopic experiments to study the structural and electronic properties of catalytic materials under operando conditions.

Original reference: Beheshti Askari, A., al Samarai, M., Hiraoka, N., Ishii, H., Tillmann, L., Muhler, M., DeBeer, S. (2020). In situ X-ray emission and high-resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy applied to Ni-based Bimetallic Dry Methane Reforming Catalysts Nanoscale 12(28), 15185-15192 doi: 10.1039/D0NR01960G

Editorial: Jensen, K.M. Ø., DeBeer, S., Koziej, D. (2020). Spectroscopy and scattering for chemistry: new possibilities and challenges with large scale facilities Nanoscale doi: 10.1039/D0NR90182B