Tutorial review on catalyst characterization and materials preparation for x-ray powder diffraction analysis

Abstract

Despite its importance and ubiquity, the information contained in powder XRD data for materials in catalysts is often neither fully harnessed nor correctly interpreted. In this Tutorial Review, we aim to provide the wider catalysis community with a brief tutorial on some of the most encountered key aspects of powder XRD instrumentation, sample preparation, data collection, and analysis procedures used to characterize both catalyst active phases and the complex technical bodies used in full-scale commercial reactors. We will emphasize characterization of broad classes of materials including zeolites, MOFs, metal oxides, and metals as well as the technical bodies relevant to large scale catalysis where various crystal sizes, shapes, dimensionalities and mixtures of materials are encountered. We hope that researchers across many fields, including those who are new to powder XRD or for whom XRD is not their primary technique, can become familiar with key diagnostics and therefore be better equipped to interpret them in the context of their samples.