(310b) Study of Gas-Solid Interaction in Confined Space By in-Situ TEM and Synchrotron X-Ray [Invited]

The reaction between gas and solid is a great interest for material science and chemical engineering. The attractive topics including the materials transformation in gas environment, gas molecules adsorption/desorption and chemical reaction on the surface. The nanoreactor built with two SiN membranes separated in ~200nm allows the samples in gases while the high energy electron beam and x-ray penetrating the system. The combination of both transmission electron microscope (TEM) and synchrotron x-ray provides the powerful multimodal platform to study the gas-solid reaction in wide range from atomic to mesoscopic scale. This system was employed to study how the AgCl transformed to AgO_x at different O₂ partial pressure and precious metal nanoparticle stability at elevated temperatures and the effect of size and composition. Also, the cross-platform holder is sharable between the TEM and synchrotron x-ray platforms. It provides the opportunities to study the identical nanoparticles by TEM and hard x-ray nanoprobe to ensure that we get the complimentary information while the particle was in operando, for example the study on the CO₂ reduction by Cu₂O nanoparticles.

This work was performed at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility, and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.