Synchrotron techniques for in situ catalytic studies: Capabilities, challenges, and opportunities

Most industrial catalysts are complex materials that usually operate at elevated pressures and temperatures. Pressure, materials, instrument, and complexity gaps are obstacles toward understanding how catalysts work and how to rationally design new catalysts. In this article, we examine existing and emerging approaches to bridge some of these gaps and gain new insights into the catalyst active phase and catalytic mechanism using synchrotron-based spectroscopy, scattering, and imaging methods. The utilization of in situ, time-resolved synchrotron techniques offers unique opportunities to study working (operando) catalysts. Using several representative examples from recent literature we illustrate the synergy from using combinations of techniques to identify new details about catalytic properties that are unavailable when these methods are used separately. Following this approach it is possible to identify new catalyst phases and reaction intermediates.