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oa Advanced Electron Microscopy Characterisation of Aluminium-Oxygen Coordination in Catalyst Supports
Performance of alumina-supported catalyst systems
- Source: Johnson Matthey Technology Review, Volume 68, Issue 4, Oct 2024, p. 583 - 592
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- 26 Oct 2023
- 04 Jan 2024
Abstract
Performance of alumina-supported catalyst systems are significantly affected by how the tetrahedral (Al-O4) and octahedral (Al-O6) coordination are mixed and blended with each other. Characterisation of aluminium-oxygen coordination is thus important to understand how catalysts interact with alumina at the microscopic level. Here we report the application of two advanced electron microscopy techniques on aluminium-oxygen coordination. The first technique is electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) that can reveal detailed electronic structure profile of aluminium valence band to analyse how aluminium is coordinated by oxygen. The second technique is pair distribution function (PDF) based on electron diffraction (ED), employed to measure aluminium-oxygen bond lengths associated with the coordination geometry.