What is it about?
It is the first observation of surface reconstruction via in situ diffraction. The reconstruction occurs on nanocrystalline Pt supported on silica during hydrogen desorption. The process could be monitored due to its rate limited by the reverse spill-over of atomic hydrogen to associate and desorb from Pt.
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Why is it important?
The paper shows possibility that many chemical/physical phenomena in nanocrystalline environment run in conditions far from thermodynamic equilibrium and processes can be controlled more by kinetics than thermodynamics. Also the elementary surface chemical reactions in heterogenous catalysis may run on the surface structured differently than the surface of a cut of the bulk structure.
Perspectives
The paper offers one step towards realizing that the atomistic study of chemical reaction in heterogenous catalysis has to be based on close to the real engineering environment of the reaction and that a lot of processes run in kinematic (not thermodynamic) regime.
Professor ZBIGNIEW Antoni KASZKUR
Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Surface reconstruction of Pt nanocrystals interacting with gas atmosphere. Bridging the pressure gap with in situ diffraction, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, January 2009, Royal Society of Chemistry,
DOI: 10.1039/b820510h.
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