Recently, one chapter, entitled as “Recent Advances in the Application of Mössbauer Spectroscopy (MS) in Heterogeneous Catalysis”, has been published on the book series of Advances in Catalysis (Adv. Catal., DOI: 10.1016/bs.acat.2015.09.001). This chapter was written under the leadership of Professors Junhu Wang and Tao Zhang.

MS is a science of studying the phenomenon of the nuclear resonance absorption of gamma rays. It has been widely applied in many fields, such as material structure, chemical bonding, in situ state characterization of catalyst and so on. Junhu Wang has been engaged in it and its applications for many years. In 2007, he was invited to join Tao Zhang's laboratory to make the MS's study in the heterogeneous catalysis.

In this chapter, we introduce MS's new application in heterogeneous catalysis, including catalysis for fuel production, environmental catalysis, aerospace catalysis, photocatalysis, etc. We summarize MS's research work in the field of heterogeneous catalysis. We also analyze MS's advantages and disadvantages. Except for the conventional Mössbauer characterization, in situ Mössbauer characterization can determine the state of Mössbauer elements, e.g, Fe, Sn etc., either in bulk or on surface during the catalytic reaction. So we can easily obtain the oxidation state, coordination number, local symmetry, effective magnetic field, interaction strength between active component and support, and active sites. This kind characteristic of MS is of benefit to understand the mechanism of catalytic reactions. Although the Mössbauer elements are limited in numbers, MS is often used to obtain the catalytic results, which cannot be easily gotten by other characterization methods. And it can also verify the correctness of the results which acquire through other technologies.

Mössbauer Applications in Heterogeneous Catalysis Published on Advances in Catalysis

For more than 60 years, the Advances in Catalysis has been committed to the latest progress in the catalytic field, and to provide a comprehensive, authoritative evaluation to the progress in catalytic science. It fills the gap between the journal papers and the textbooks in the areas of catalysis research. So the publication of this chapter is of great value for the development of MS in investigating the catalytic mechanism and the structure-activity correlation.

The above-mentioned research work has been financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences for the “100 Talents”, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Visiting Professorships for Senior International Scientists. (Text and Image by Dr. Kuo Liu)