Direct visualization of independent Ta centers supported on 2D TiO2 nanosheets

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Accepted version
Date
2019
Authors
Bo, Zhenyu
Thornburgh, Nicholas
Peng, Lingxuan
Gutierrez Moreno, Jose Julio
Nolan, Michael
Marks, Laurence D.
Notestein, Justin M.
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American Chemical Society
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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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Keywords
HAADF STEM , Supported catalysts , Oxides , Microscopy , Single atom catalysts
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
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