Understanding Metal Oxophilicity and Structures in Nanoscale Metals and Alloys
EMSL Project ID
48215
Abstract
Noble metals alloyed with transition metals at various compositions exhibit enhanced catalytic activity for many types of reactions involving oxygen species. Our current efforts reveal that oxophilicity may play a role in maneuvering surface oxygenated species through the alloyed transition metal sites. Fundamental questions for sustainable high catalytic activity involve whether the oxygen activation or transfer occurring on the multicomponent particle surface induces any significant structural change of the nanoalloy in the catalytic process and how this is related to the oxophilicity. We propose to investigate a critical hypothesis that the surface metal-oxygen coordination structures of nanoalloys can be manipulated at the atomic scale by reactive processing to enhance catalytic reactions involving molecular oxygen species (e.g., CO, methanol, ethanol, and hydrocarbon oxidation reactions). This proposal seeks the use of the advanced XPS techniques at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory facility to determine the role of the metal-oxygen structures and structural/chemical ordering of the catalyst. The results will be used not only for understanding the catalytic oxidation reactions involving molecular oxygen funded currently by NSF, DOE and NYSERDA, but also in meeting some of the urgent deadlines (e.g., NSF proposal deadline Jan 15, 2014) in preliminary data for new grant applications and in providing critical evidence for new publications based on some of the new findings from our current efforts.
Project Details
Project type
Limited Scope
Start Date
2013-11-22
End Date
2014-01-07
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator