The Electron Microscope Is an Indispensable Instrument for the Characterisation of Catalysts

Abstract

No other single instrument rivals the electron microscope in the wealth of structural (atomic, nanoscopic, mesoscopic and microscopic), topographic and electronic information that it provides in the characterisation of solid catalysts such as those used commercially or for laboratory trials and model studies. After a brief update on the significance of recent dvances in technique which, inter alia, allows electron crystallography to be used as freely—and on much smaller specimens—as X-ray crystallography, the veracity of the above claims is illustrated by a number of specific examples. These include: (a) pin-pointing the location and topography of nanoparticle catalysts; (b) constructing element maps (and compositional distributions) of solid catalysts; (c) elucidating the nature of intergrowths (coherent, recurrent and random) of closely similar structures within a supposed new catalyst; and (d) identifying atoms (or small groups of atoms) of high atomic number supported on large-area solids.