I believe that the fitting of the C1s peak (obtained from near ambient pressure XPS or measured samples under inert conditions) could be used to gain more information about the different key intermediates, generated during the electrochemical reduction of CO2 into valuable chemicals. how to do it properly is my question?! any advice or tips will be appreciated
Well, you will have to acquire XPS between each reaction step and deconvolute the signal for components. Examples can be found here:
Article Atomic Oxygen on Graphite: Chemical Characterization and The...
Article Formation of Sublimable Nanographene Oxides by Reacting Coro...
Note that these examples are for sp2 carbon for which the natural lineshape is quite the object of debates.
If you have done the deconvolution you need to run DFT (or other quantum chemical) calculations in order to assign you components. Note that in the examples I posted a simple Koopmans' theorem approach was sufficient while e.g. on metal surface you may need to use more sophisticated methods such as final state approximations.
Jürgen Weippert thanks. I will have a look at the above mentioned articles,
the problem is how to get rid of the adsorbed carbon species during the running experiment in the glovebox or from the XPS instrument
Well, carbon species from residual atmosphere are usually CO and CO2, but since these are reactants in your scheme anyway, you will have to include them into your fits. Or do you have the suspicion that your setup contains hydrocarbons? That wouldn't be the standard.
CO and CO2 are expected to be residual interferences, and unfortunately, they are reactant and a key intermediate in our process, it would be very hard to differentiate between the residual atmospheric and the produced one during CO2 reduction.
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