PSI New Method To Investigate Ageing Processes In Catalyst Materials

Paul Scherrer Institute researchers have developed a new tomography method with which they can measure chemical properties inside catalyst materials in 3-D extremely precisely and faster than before.

The application is equally important for science and industry, as researchers investigated the ageing process of the material group of vanadium phosphorus oxides (VPOs), which is widely used as a catalyst in the chemical industry.

VPOs change over years of use and exhibit a slight loss of the desired properties.

Until now, however, it was not completely clear which processes in the nano-structure and at the atomic scale were responsible for the observed decrease in performance.

The PSI researchers investigated this question with state-of-the-art material characterisation techniques.

To make the chemical structure of the samples visible on the nanoscale, they combined two methods: a specific tomography method previously developed at PSI called ptychographic X-ray computed tomography, and a local transmission spectroscopy method …

Read the full story: How catalysts age – Paul Scherrer Institute