Mossbauer spectroscopy particles

The example is typical for many applications of Mossbauer spectroscopy in catalysis a catalyst undergoes a certain treatment, then its Mossbauer spectrum is measured in situ at room temperature. Flowever, if the catalyst contains highly dispersed particles, the measurement of spectra at cryogenic temperatures becomes advantageous as the recoil-free fraction of surface atoms increases substantially at temperatures below 300 K. Secondly, spectra of small particles that behave superparamagne-... 

The second approach is to study real catalysts with in situ techniques such as infrared and Mossbauer spectroscopy, EXAFS and XRD, under reaction conditions, or, as is more often done, under a controlled environment after quenching of the reaction. The in situ techniques, however, are not sufficiently surface specific to yield the desired atom-by-atom characterization of the surface. At best they determine the composition of the particles. 

MOssbauer Spectroscopy. Small, single domain, ferro- or ferri-magnetic particles can show both collective magnetic excitation (precession of the magnetic moment) and superparamagnetic (relaxa-... 

This study could be extended to the synthesis of iron nanoparticles. Using Fe[N(SiMe3)2]2 as precursor and a mixture of HDA and oleic acid, spherical nanoparticles are initially formed as in the case of cobalt. However, a thermal treatment at 150 °C in the presence of H2 leads to coalescence of the particles into cubic particles of 7 nm side length. Furthermore, these particles self-organize into cubic super-structures (cubes of cubes Fig. ) [79]. The nanoparticles are very air-sensitive but consist of zerovalent iron as evidenced by Mossbauer spectroscopy. The fact that the spherical particles present at the early stage of the reaction coalesce into rods in the case of cobalt and cubes in the case of iron is attributed to the crystal structure of the metal particles hep for cobalt, bcc for iron. 

Equation (4.15) would be extremely onerous to evaluate by explicit treatment of the nucleons as a many-particle system. However, in Mossbauer spectroscopy, we are dealing with eigenstates of the nucleus that are characterized by the total angular momentum with quantum number 7. Fortunately, the electric quadrupole interaction can be readily expressed in terms of this momentum 7, which is called the nuclear spin other properties of the nucleus need not to be considered. This is possible because the transformational properties of the quadrupole moment, which is an irreducible 2nd rank tensor, make it possible to use Clebsch-Gordon coefficients and the Wigner-Eckart theorem to replace the awkward operators 3x,xy—(5,yr (in spatial coordinates) by angular momentum operators of the total... 

Mossbauer spectroscopy has been extensively used for studies of nanostructured materials and several reviews on magnetic nanoparticles have been published, see e.g. [6-8, 46 8]. The magnetic properties of nanoparticles may differ from those of bulk materials for several reasons. The most dramatic effect of a small particle size is that the magnetization direction is not stable at finite temperatures, but fluctuates. 

McCammon et al. have studied fine nickel particles using Ni Mossbauer spectroscopy [22]. The measured average hyperfine field of 10 nm particles at 4.2 K was 7.7 T for nickel foil, it was found to be 7.5 T. Application of an external magnetic field of 6 T caused a reduction of the hyperfine splitting to 1.5 T as a consequence of the negative hyperfine field at Ni nuclei. 

Wender and Hershkowitz [237] used the sensitivity of the recoil-free fraction in tungsten Mossbauer spectroscopy to deduce the effect of irradiation of tungsten compounds by Coulomb excitation of the resonance levels (2 states of I82,i84,i8 y with 6 MeV a-particles. While no effect of irradiation on the/-factors could be observed for tungsten metal in agreement with [233], a decrease of/was measured for WC, W2B, W2B5, and WO3 after irradiation. 

Fe/Ir catalysts on silica and alumina Fe and Ir Mossbauer spectroscopy silica- and alumina-supported Fe-Ir catalysts formed by calcination in air contain mixtures of small particles of Fe(III) oxide and Ir(IV) oxide. IrOz is reduced in hydrogen to metallic Ir. a-Fe203 on SiOz is reduced in hydrogen to an Fe-Ir alloy, whilst supported on alumina stabilizes in hydrogen as Fe(II). Possible use for methanol formation is discussed... 

Properties of FeCr,o solid samples have been studied by X-ray diffraction, 57Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy and magnetic measurements to stimulate the interaction of Fe with fullerene. FeCr,o samples have been prepared by decomposition of the 1,3-dipolar cycloadduct of the fullerene and ferrocene nitrile oxide. The components exhibit super paramagnetic properties originating from an interaction between FeCr,o complexes within the nano-particles. Each nano-particle consists of hundreds to thousands complexes (546). 

The usual techniques for the determination of particle sizes of catalysts are electron microscopy, chemisorption, XRD line broadening or profile analysis and magnetic measurements. The advantage of using Mossbauer spectroscopy for this purpose is that one simultaneously characterizes the state of the catalyst. As the state of supported iron catalysts depends often on subtleties in the reduction, the simultaneous determination of particle size and degree of reduction as in the studies of Fig. 5.10 is an important advantage of Mossbauer spectroscopy. 

The term exp(-2k2c ) in (6-9) accounts for the disorder of the solid. Static disorder arises if atoms of the same coordination shell have slightly different distances to the central atom. Amorphous solids, for instance, possess large static disorder. Dynamic disorder, on the other hand, is caused by lattice vibrations of the atoms, as explained in Appendix 1. Dynamic disorder becomes much less important at lower temperatures, and it is therefore an important advantage to measure spectra at cryogenic temperatures, especially if a sample consists of highly dispersed particles. The same argument holds in X-ray and electron diffraction, as well as in Mossbauer spectroscopy. 

Recently, however, considerable doubt has been cast on these conclusions. In the case of the putative Mg/Al/Sn - CO3, Mg/Al/Zr - CO3 and Co/Al/Sn - CO3 materials it has been unambiguously shown by X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and Mossbauer spectroscopy that the tetravalent cations are segregated from the LDH structure and form amorphous oxide-hke particles [69]. It was further demonstrated that the increased values of Uo previously attributed to the introduction of the large cations... 

However, " Sn Mossbauer spectroscopy allows even much better characterization of Pt/Sn bimetallic nanoparticles. For example, with silica-deposited platinum-tin particles of homogeneous size (1.7 and 4.0nm, respectively, for two different samples) it has been demonstrated that (Figure 2.17) ... 

Mossbauer spectroscopy evidenced the presence of paramagnetic Fe-Ru particles on silica in which H2Fe2Ru2(CO)i3 and H2FeRu3(CO)i3 were impregnated and subsequently decarbonylated [86]. 

Further identification of the particles is made with 57Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy. Mossbauer spectra were recorded with a conventional constant acceleration spectrometer with 57Co in Rh matrix as a y-ray source. Velocity calibration was made using a 5-pm a-Fe foil at 293 K. Figure 1.6.10 shows the Mossbauer spectra of the sample recorded at 293 K and 4.2 K. Spectra were fitted with theoretical... 

These criteria for an ideal spectroscopic technique have been met, to a large extent, by Mossbauer spectroscopy. UHV conditions are not required since one utilizes y rays with energies in the keV range, and the technique lends itself easily to in situ studies. Furthermore, the technique is ideally suited for studies of small particle systems, and in several instances information about particle size can also be obtained. The unique feature of Mossbauer spectroscopy is the extremely high energy sensitivity of the technique. This allows detailed chemical, structural, and magnetic information to be obtained about atoms on the surface or in the bulk phase. 

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