Hello all,
I loaded 15 wt% Co3O4 on mesoporous carbon nitride
After getting EDX mapping, I found out that there is just 1 wt% on my final sample.
The process of loading cobalt oxide on mesoporous carbon nitride include three main steps (stirring, drying and calcination)
If anyone could help me, I really appreciate
Can you explain what reaction you have done to load Co3O4 on carbon nitride? By the way, EDX does not give exact amount of the materials in this composite because mainly the material on the surface are measured.
As Mohammad Kooti said your material could be non homogeneous. You may want to make a crossection of your specimen.
check your loading method, check water absorption capacity of support, as per h2o absorption capacity, use pore filling method and evaporate h2o, check loading after this. Also may be activation of C support is require?
How do you calculate 1 wt%?
EDX measure what you have on the surface + ~20 micron down in the volume, because you have light carbon matrix. Then you use quantification tool (depends on the model of your EDX spectrometer), this tool calculates weight % of what microscope and EDX detector are seeing. This literally mean that mostly you will have carbon, because it's your matrix and everything is contaminated with C-based compounds. Thus, your 1wt% is automatically incorrect.
The best ever option is dissolve Co3O4 from a weight portion of composite and simply titrate it. 2h of work and you will have 100% quantitative result!
I missed part about your matrices (carbon/nitrogen). Amount of carbon in automated quantitative EDS analysis (which you used, I suppose) is greatly exaggerated. You need careful standard-based analysis, or do not use EDS at all for such quantification.
Thank you.
I have another question. Is EDX mapping reliable for mesoporous material?
I prepared another sample and it found out that the amount of cobalt which i added to my mesoporous material has huge difference with the amount of cobalt calculated from EDX mapping. Maybe this test is not accurate for my material and i should ICP test instead.
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