Direct visualization of independent Ta centers supported on 2D TiO2 nanosheets
Bo, Zhenyu; Thornburgh, Nicholas; Peng, Lingxuan; Gutierrez Moreno, Jose Julio; Nolan, Michael; Marks, Laurence D.; Notestein, Justin M.
Date:
2019
Copyright:
© 2019 American Chemical Society. This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appears in final form in Nano Letters, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b03305
Full text restriction information:
Access to this article is restricted until 12 months after publication by request of the publisher
Restriction lift date:
2020-10-29
Citation:
Bo, Z., Thornburgh, N., Peng, L., Gutierrez Moreno, J. J., Nolan, M., Marks, L. D. and Notestein, J. M. (2019) 'Direct Visualization of Independent Ta Centers Supported on 2D TiO2 Nanosheets', Nano Letters, In Press, doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b03305
Abstract:
Highly-dispersed, supported oxides are ubiquitous solid catalysts, but they can be challenging to characterize with atomic precision. Here it is shown that crystalline anatase TiO2 nanosheets (~5 nm thick) are ideal supports for imaging highly-dispersed active sites. Ta cations are deposited by several routes, and high-resolution high angle annular dark-field (HAADF) scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) is used to determine the location of Ta with respect to the TiO2 lattice and to quantify Ta-Ta distances. In the best case, it is shown that >80% of Ta atoms are isolated from one another, whereas other techniques are blind to this critical catalytic property or give only qualitative estimates. TiO2 nanosheets may prove to be a useful platform for other types of catalysis studies.
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