Mossbauer spectroscopy, elements

Mossbauer spectroscopy is a specialist characterization tool in catalysis. Nevertheless, it has yielded essential information on a number of important catalysts, such as the iron catalyst for ammonia and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, as well as the CoMoS hydrotreating catalyst. Mossbauer spectroscopy provides the oxidation state, the internal magnetic field, and the lattice symmetry of a limited number of elements such as iron, cobalt, tin, iridium, ruthenium, antimony, platinum and gold, and can be applied in situ. 

The great advantage of Mossbauer spectroscopy is that it can be applied in situ. The major limitation of the technique is that it can only be applied to a couple of elements, among which iron and tin are the easiest to study. 

The parameters that Mossbauer spectroscopy is sensitive to depend on the immediate vicinity of the absorbing nucleus. However, for heavier elements, the electrons close to the nucleus move at high velocities, close to the speed of light. In this situation, relativistic effects become significant and should be treated at some level of detail. 

The previous chapters are exclusively devoted to the measurements and interpretation of Fe spectra of various iron-containing systems. Iron is, by far, the most extensively explored element in the field of chemistry compared with all other Mdssbauer-active elements because the Mossbauer effect of Fe is very easy to observe and the spectra are, in general, well resolved and they reflect important information about bonding and structural properties. Besides iron, there are a good number of other transition metals suitable for Mossbauer spectroscopy which is, however, less extensively studied because of technical and/or spectral resolution problems. In recent years, many of these difficulties have been overcome, and we shall see in the following sections a good deal of successful Mossbauer spectroscopy that has been performed on compounds of... 

RBa2Cu307 (R = rare earth element or Y), La2 (5r,.Cu04 (0 < X < 0.3) Eu-155(Gd-155) emission Mossbauer spectroscopy, EFG tensor at R sites, in good agreement with point charge model when holes are supposed to be mainly in sublattices of the chain and at oxygen in Cu-O plane... 

The miniaturized Mossbauer instruments have proven as part of the NASA Mars Exploration Rover 2003 mission that Mossbauer spectroscopy is a powerful tool for planetary exploration, including our planet Earth. For the advanced model of MIMOS II, the new detector technologies and electronic components increase sensitivity and performance significantly. In combination with the high-energy resolution of the SDD, it will be possible to perform XRF analysis in parallel to Mossbauer spectroscopy. In addition to the Fe-mineralogy, information on the sample s elemental composition will be obtained. 

The Mossbauer effect as a spectroscopic method probes transitions within an atom s nucleus and therefore requires a nucleus with low-lying excited states. The effect has been observed for 43 elements. For applications in bioinorganic chemistry, the 57Fe nucleus has the greatest relevance and the focus will be exclusively on this nucleus here. Mossbauer spectroscopy requires (a) the emission of y rays from... 

The recoilless nuclear resonance absorption of y-radiation (Mossbauer effect) has been verified for more than 40 elements, but only some 15 of them are suitable for practical applications [33, 34]. The limiting factors are the lifetime and the energy of the nuclear excited state involved in the Mossbauer transition. The lifetime determines the spectral line width, which should not exceed the hyperfine interaction energies to be observed. The transition energy of the y-quanta determines the recoil energy and thus the resonance effect [34]. 57Fe is by far the most suited and thus the most widely studied Mossbauer-active nuclide, and 57Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy has become a standard technique for the characterisation of SCO compounds of iron. 

In this chapter, we will first describe what the Mossbauer effect is, then explain why it can only be observed in the solid state and in a limited number of elements. Next we discuss the so-called hyperfine interactions between the nucleus and its environment, which make the technique so informative. After a few remarks on spectral interpretation we go systematically through a number of examples which show what type of information Mossbauer spectroscopy yields about catalysts. 

In conclusion, Mossbauer spectroscopy has matured into one of the classical techniques for catalyst characterization, although its application is limited to a relatively small number of elements which exhibit the Mossbauer effect. The technique is used to identify phases, determine oxidation states, and to follow the... 

The study of metals in biological systems requires techniques, some of them highly specific, some limited to certain aspects of the metal ion in question, some of more general applicability. Thus, Mossbauer spectroscopy in biological systems is restricted to iron-containing systems because the only element available with a Mossbauer nucleus is 57Fe. The EPR spectroscopic techniques will be of application only if the metal centre has an unpaired electron. In contrast, provided that crystals can be obtained, X-ray diffraction allows the determination of the 3-D structure of metalloproteins and their metal centres. 

Spectroscopic techniques may provide the least ambiguous methods for verification of actual sorption mechanisms. Zeltner et al. (Chapter 8) have applied FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared) spectroscopy and microcalorimetric titrations in a study of the adsorption of salicylic acid by goethite these techniques provide new information on the structure of organic acid complexes formed at the goethite-water interface. Ambe et al. (Chapter 19) present the results of an emission Mossbauer spectroscopic study of sorbed Co(II) and Sb(V). Although Mossbauer spectroscopy can only be used for a few chemical elements, the technique provides detailed information about the molecular bonding of sorbed species and may be used to differentiate between adsorption and surface precipitation. 

This review will introduce basic techniques for calculating equilibrium and kinetic stable isotope fractionations in molecules, aqueous complexes, and solid phases, with a particular focus on the thermodynamic approach that has been most commonly applied to studies of equilibrium fractionations of well-studied elements (H, C, N, O, and S) (Urey 1947). Less direct methods for calculating equilibrium fractionations will be discussed briefly, including techniques based on Mossbauer spectroscopy (Polyakov 1997 Polyakov and Mineev 2000). 

Table I shows the various Mossbauer nuclides—i.e., the nuclides where the Mossbauer eflFect has actually been seen. Not all of these are as easy to exploit as the Fe and 9Sn cases referred to above. However, with improved techniques a number of these should prove accessible to the chemist. Representative elements of almost all parts of the periodic table are tractable by these techniques. It seems clear, however, that the methods of Mossbauer spectroscopy are no longer technique-oriented but that this field is becoming a problem-oriented discipline. In other words, the Mossbauer effect is now used successfully in many cases not only to demonstrate the effect or to corroborate physical evidence obtained by other means—NMR, or infrared, or kinetic studies— but also to solve new chemical problems.

In conclusion I should like to consider a few of the chemical investigations which might be accomplished in the rare earth field by Mossbauer spectroscopy. The study of nonstoichiometric oxides has been discussed earlier, but there is the problem of finding an appropriate doping nuclide for the praseodymium oxide system. The element most capable of following the changes in oxidation state of the praseodymium is terbium-159, which does have a Mossbauer state, however, with a rather broad resonance (58,0 k.e.v., = 0.13 nsec.). Nevertheless, with a sufiiciently... 

Carl W. Seidel During this discussion I hope that the panel and the audience will comment on the future of Mdssbauer spectroscopy in chemistry, both as an investigative tool for different elements and as to the type of information that is or may be available from Mossbauer spectroscopy. We will begin with questions on Dr. Herberts paper. 

Dr. Erickson For those interested in coordination chemistry, certain other transition metal atoms are suitable for Mossbauer spectroscopy. One in particular is ruthenium which is just below iron in the Periodic Table. It is a difficult isotope to work with since it requires helium temperatures almost exclusively. I don t know whether it is possible to work at nitrogen temperatures or not, but Kistner at Brookhaven has examined various ruthenium compounds from the 2-j- to the 8+ oxidation states with interesting results. These are not published yet, but at least his work offers the possibility of going down one element below the other in the Periodic Table to study chemical effects. Osmium, which is below ruthenium, can also be Mossbauered. Some sort of systematic study like this involving elements in the various transition series would be extremely interesting. 

The morning session was devoted to a general explanation of the areas of application in studying magnetic properties, oxidation states, compounds, and metal structure. In the afternoon, reviews of the Mossbauer investigations of iron, tin, iodine, tellurium, and some of the rare earth elements were presented. The meeting concluded with a discussion on the future of Mossbauer Spectroscopy in which an interested audience participated. 

The variety of symmetries in the garnet structure (coordinations 4, 6, and 8) allows considerable compositional range. Table 5.16 lists the elements commonly present in positions X, X and Z. The diadochy of Al, Ti" ", and Fe in the tetrahedral site has been confirmed by Mossbauer spectroscopy on natural Fe-Ti-bearing garnets (Schwartz and Burns, 1978), and the presence of phosphorus in these sites, observed in upper mantle garnet, is attributable, according to Bishop et al. (1976), to coupled substitutions of the type... 

There are four naturally occurring isotopes of iron ( Fe 5.82%, Fe 91.66%, Fe 2.19%, Fe 0.33%), and nine others are known. The most abundant isotope ( Fe) is the most stable nuclear configuration of all the elements in terms of nuclear binding energy per nucleon. This stability, in terms of nuclear equilibrium established in the last moments of supernova events, explains the widespread occurrence of iron in the cosmos. The isotope Fe has practical applications, most notably in Mossbauer spectroscopy, which has been widely exploited to characterize iron coordination complexes. 

Mossbauer spectroscopy is a selective tool for the quantitative analysis and spe-ciation of a very limited number of elements. It has been mainly used to study iron compounds—e.g., ceramics, as it gives valuable information about iron-bearing oxide and silicate minerals. This technique has been applied to the identification of the provenance of clay and used raw materials—the manufacturing method employed in pottery and, to a lesser extent, to the characterization of pigments and weathering crusts formed on stone monuments [23]. 

Because the greatest limitation for the general use of Mossbauer spectroscopy is that it cannot be observed for all elements, those criteria which restrict the application of Mossbauer spectroscopy to certain isotopes will be discussed in detail in Section II, A. Here, it will be shown which of these Mossbauer isotopes may be used to obtain chemical information, and how these isotopes may also be used to obtain in an indirect manner similar information about elements for which there exists no Mossbauer effect. 

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