The oxidation of copper catalysts during ethylene epoxidation.

The oxidation of copper catalysts during ethylene epoxidation was characterized using in situ photoemission spectroscopy and electron microscopy. Gas chromatography, proton-transfer reaction mass spectrometry and electron-ionization mass spectrometry were used to characterize the catalytic properties of the oxidized copper. We find that copper corrodes during epoxidation in a 1 : 1 mixture of oxygen and ethylene. The catalyst corrosion passes through several stages, beginning with the formation of an O-terminated surface, followed by the formation of Cu2O scale and eventually a CuO scale. The oxidized catalyst exhibits measurable activity for ethylene epoxidation, but with a low selectivity of <3%. Tests on pure Cu2O and CuO powders confirm that the oxides intrinsically exhibit partial-oxidation activity. Cu2O was found to form acetaldehyde and ethylene epoxide in roughly equal amounts (1.0% and 1.2% respectively), while CuO was found to form much less ethyl aldehyde than ethylene epoxide (0.1% and 1.0%, respectively). Metallic copper catalysts were examined in extreme dilute-O2 epoxidation conditions to try and keep the catalyst from oxidizing during the reaction. It was found that in feed of 1 part O2 to 2500 parts C2H4 (PO2 = 1.2 × 10(-4) mbar) the copper surface becomes O-terminated. The O-terminated surface was found to exhibit partial-oxidation selectivity similar to that of Cu2O. With increasing O2 concentration (>8/2500) Cu2O forms and eventually covers the surface.

Reaction cell for in situ soft x-ray absorption spectroscopy and resonant inelastic x-ray scattering measurements of heterogeneous catalysis up to 1 atm and 250 °C.

We present a novel in situ reaction cell for heterogeneous catalysis monitored in situ by x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS). The reaction can be carried out at a total pressure up to 1 atm, a regime that has not been accessible to comparable in situ techniques and thus closes the pressure gap to many industrial standard conditions. Two alternate catalyst geometries were tested: (A) a thin film evaporated directly onto an x-ray transparent membrane with a flowing reaction gas mixture behind it or (B) a powder placed behind both the membrane and a gap of flowing reaction gas mixture. To illustrate the working principle and feasibility of our reaction cell setup we have chosen ethylene epoxidation over a silver catalyst as a test case. The evolution of incorporated oxygen species was monitored by total electron/fluorescence yield O K-XAS as well as O K-RIXS, which is a powerful method to separate contributions from inequivalent sites. We find that our method can reliably detect transient species that exist during catalytic reaction conditions that are hardly accessible using other spectroscopic methods.

Relativistic and interchannel coupling effects in photoionization angular distributions by synchrotron spectrocopy of laser cooled atoms.

We investigate the angular distribution of photoionization fragments at low photon energies (12-40 eV) in an open shell atom, by synchrotron radiation recoil ion momentum spectroscopy in a laser cooled and trapped sample. For cesium atoms, for which relativistic effects play an important role and the ion recoil is relatively small, we could determine large and rapid changes of the asymmetry parameter beta from two, observed for s electrons outside resonances and far from the Cooper minimum. They can be explained by relativistic effects and interchannel coupling arising from final state configuration mixing.