Visualizing Gas Molecules Interacting with Supported Nanoparticulate Catalysts at Reaction Conditions
- Hideto Yoshida1,*,
- Yasufumi Kuwauchi2,*,
- Joerg R. Jinschek3,
- Keju Sun4,
- Shingo Tanaka4,
- Masanori Kohyama4,
- Satoshi Shimada5,
- Masatake Haruta5,
- Seiji Takeda1,†
+ Author Affiliations
- ↵†To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: takeda@sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp
↵* These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
Understanding how molecules can restructure the surfaces of heterogeneous catalysts under reaction conditions requires methods that can visualize atoms in real space and time. We applied a newly developed aberration-corrected environmental transmission electron microscopy to show that adsorbed carbon monoxide (CO) molecules caused the {100} facets of a gold nanoparticle to reconstruct during CO oxidation at room temperature. The CO molecules adsorbed at the on-top sites of gold atoms in the reconstructed surface, and the energetic favorability of this reconstructed structure was confirmed by ab initio calculations and image simulations. This atomic-scale visualizing method can be applied to help elucidate reaction mechanisms in heterogeneous catalysis.
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