X-ray emission spectroscopy: highly sensitive techniques for time-resolved probing of cerium reactivity under catalytic conditions

Abstract

Oxygen storage materials such as ceria are used in many catalytic applications because they can reversibly bind and release oxygen. Tools are needed to observe and quantify this activity which involves a change in the cerium oxidation state and to understand the involvement of cerium in catalytic processes. To prove that cerium changes its oxidation state in the catalytic cycle the transient rates of Ce³⁺ formation and decay should be compared to the overall reaction rate. For such mechanistic studies the time resolution is essential as the quantification of the Ce³⁺ species should be faster than the reaction rate. However, it is challenging to follow the dynamic changes of the cerium oxidation state under reaction conditions, especially when the concentration of cerium atoms involved in the reaction cycle is low. In this paper, we evaluate the sensitivity of high-resolution X-ray emission-based methods for the in situ time-resolved quantification of small concentrations of Ce³⁺ in ceria-based materials. We demonstrate that resonant X-ray emission spectroscopy (RXES) at optimal excitation energy is more sensitive than high energy resolution off-resonant spectroscopy (HEROS) and non-resonant X-ray emission spectroscopy (non-resonant XES) and that it can track the reactivity of less than 0.3% of cerium atoms in a 1% Pt/CeO₂ catalyst in a plug-flow reactor with sub-second time resolution. These results demonstrate that X-ray emission-based methods can be used as very sensitive tools and provide new insights into dynamic changes of the oxidation state in reducible oxides in a variety of applications.