Atomic-Scale Determination of Active Facets on the MoVTeNb Oxide M1 Phase and Their Intrinsic Catalytic Activity for Ethane Oxidative Dehydrogenation

	D. Melzer, P. Xu, D.Hartmann, Y. Zhu, N.D. Browning, M. Sanchez-Sanchez M, J.A Lercher  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed, 2016, 55, 1-6,  DOI: 10.1002/anie.201600463 Copyright Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. Reproduced with permission.

Professor Johannes Lercher and his groups from TUM Germany and PNNL USA, quantitatively demonstrated that differences in catalytic activity among M1 samples of MoVTeNb complex oxides of equal chemical composition depend primarily on the morphology of the particles.  They combined STEM with He ion microscopy (HIM) images, Rietveld analysis, and kinetic tests revealing that the activation of ethane is correlated to the availability of the most frequent lateral termination planes of the crystals {001}, {120}, and {210} at the surface of M1 crystals.  Full paper can be found at DOI:10.1002/anie.201600463

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201600463/abstract