Development of the Pair Distribution Function for the Study of Supported Catalyst Formation

In the quest to develop the science needed for supported catalyst engineering no technique has been developed so far able to study the local structural changes during synthesis. In this work we will present the advances we have made using the scattering technique called Pair Distribution Function to study ex situ and in situ the crystallization of the catalysts. This technique allows us to get information on the location of the metal particles relative to other atoms in the support and other metal particles throughout the synthesis process which are correlated to the final metal dispersion. Our emphasis so far has been in the growth of Pt clusters in zeolite X.