Atomic Resolution Imaging of Nanoscale Structural Ordering in a Complex Metal Oxide Catalyst
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials Research CenterBiological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) Division
Chemical Science Program
Core Labs
Imaging and Characterization Core Lab
Nanostructured Functional Materials (NFM) laboratory
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Date
2012-08-14Online Publication Date
2012-08-14Print Publication Date
2012-08-28Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/575565
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The determination of the atomic structure of a functional material is crucial to understanding its "structure-to-property" relationship (e.g., the active sites in a catalyst), which is however challenging if the structure possesses complex inhomogeneities. Here, we report an atomic structure study of an important MoVTeO complex metal oxide catalyst that is potentially useful for the industrially relevant propane-based BP/SOHIO process. We combined aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy with synchrotron powder X-ray crystallography to explore the structure at both nanoscopic and macroscopic scales. At the nanoscopic scale, this material exhibits structural and compositional order within nanosized "domains", while the domains show disordered distribution at the macroscopic scale. We proposed that the intradomain compositional ordering and the interdomain electric dipolar interaction synergistically induce the displacement of Te atoms in the Mo-V-O channels, which determines the geometry of the multifunctional metal oxo-active sites.Citation
Zhu, Y., Wang, Q., Zhao, L., Teng, B., Lu, W., & Han, Y. (2012). Atomic Resolution Imaging of Nanoscale Structural Ordering in a Complex Metal Oxide Catalyst. Chemistry of Materials, 24(16), 3269–3278. doi:10.1021/cm301828nSponsors
This research was supported by baseline research funds from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. We appreciate the support of Dr. Qinfen Gu from Australian Synchrotron research center for carrying out the powder X-ray diffraction experiments. We thank Prof. Guanglie Lv (National Science Park, Zhejiang, PR China) for useful discussions.Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)Journal
Chemistry of Materialsae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1021/cm301828n