Tag Archives: Renu Sharma

Watching rust turn into iron

a) Colorized SEM images of iron oxide nanoblades used in the experiment. b) Colorized cross-section of SEM image of the nanoblades. c) Colorized SEM image of nanoblades after 1 hour of reduction reaction at 500 °C in molecular hydrogen, showing the sawtooth shape along the edges (square). d) Colorized SEM image showing the formation of holes after 2 hours of reduction. The scale bar is 1 micrometer. Credit: W. Zhu et al./ACS Nano and K. Irvine/NIST

Here’s more about being able to watch iron transition from one state to the next according to an April 5, 2017 news item on phys.org

Using a state-of-the-art microscopy technique, experimenters at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have witnessed a slow-motion, atomic-scale transformation of rust—iron oxide—back to pure iron metal, in all of its chemical steps.

An April 4, 2017 NIST news release describes the role iron plays in modern lifestyles and the purpose of this research,

Among the most abundant minerals on Earth, iron oxides play a leading role in magnetic data storage, cosmetics, the pigmentation of paints and drug delivery. These materials also serve as catalysts for several types of chemical reactions, including the production of ammonia for fertilizer.

To fine-tune the properties of these minerals for each application, scientists work with nanometer-scale particles of the oxides. But to do so, researchers need a detailed, atomic-level understanding of reduction, a key chemical reaction that iron oxides undergo. That knowledge, however, is often lacking because reduction—a process that is effectively the opposite of rusting—proceeds too rapidly for many types of probes to explore at such a fine level.

In a new effort to study the microscopic details of metal oxide reduction, researchers used a specially adapted transmission electron microscope (TEM) at NIST’s NanoLab facility to document the step-by-step transformation of nanocrystals of the iron oxide hematite (Fe2O3) to the iron oxide magnetite (Fe3O4), and finally to iron metal.

“Even though people have studied iron oxide for many years, there have been no dynamic studies at the atomic scale,” said Wenhui Zhu of the State University of New York at Binghamton, who worked on her doctorate in the NanoLab in 2015 and 2016. “We are seeing what’s actually happening during the entire reduction process instead of studying just the initial steps.”

That’s critical, added NIST’s Renu Sharma, “if you want to control the composition or properties of iron oxides and understand the relationships between them.”

By lowering the temperature of the reaction and decreasing the pressure of the hydrogen gas that acted as the reducing agent, the scientists slowed down the reduction process so that it could be captured with an environmental TEM—a specially configured TEM that can study both solids and gas. The instrument enables researchers to perform atomic-resolution imaging of a sample under real-life conditions—in this case the gaseous environment necessary for iron oxides to undergo reduction–rather than under the vacuum needed in ordinary TEMs.

“This is the most powerful tool I’ve used in my research and one of the very few in the United States,” said Zhu. She, Sharma and their colleagues describe their findings in a recent issue of ACS Nano.

The team examined the reduction process in a bicrystal of iron oxide, consisting of two identical iron oxide crystals rotated at 21.8 degrees with respect to each other. The bicrystal structure also served to slow down the reduction process, making it easier to follow with the environmental TEM.

In studying the reduction reaction, the researchers identified a previously unknown intermediate state in the transformation from magnetite to hematite. In the middle stage, the iron oxide retained its original chemical structure, Fe2O3, but changed the crystallographic arrangement of its atoms from rhombohedral (a diagonally stretched cube) to cubic.

This intermediate state featured a defect in which oxygen atoms fail to populate some of the sites in the crystal that they normally would. This so-called oxygen vacancy defect is not uncommon and is known to strongly influence the electrical and catalytic properties of oxides. But the researchers were surprised to find that the defects occurred in an ordered pattern, which had never been found before in the reduction of Fe2O3 to Fe3O4, Sharma said.

The significance of the intermediate state remains under study, but it may be important for controlling the reduction rate and other properties of the reduction process, she adds. “The more we understand, the better we can manipulate the microstructure of these oxides,” said Zhu. By manipulating the microstructure, researchers may be able to enhance the catalytic activity of iron oxides.

Even though a link has already been provided for the paper, I will give it again along with a citation,

In Situ Atomic-Scale Probing of the Reduction Dynamics of Two-Dimensional Fe2O3 Nanostructures by Wenhui Zhu, Jonathan P. Winterstein, Wei-Chang David Yang, Lu Yuan, Renu Sharma, and Guangwen Zhou. ACS Nano, 2017, 11 (1), pp 656–664 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b06950 Publication Date (Web): December 13, 2016

Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Oh so cute! Baby nanotubes!

Scientists from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology and from two US universities have successfully filmed the formation of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) according to a Dec. 2, 2014 news item on Nanowerk,

Single-walled carbon nanotubes are loaded with desirable properties. In particular, the ability to conduct electricity at high rates of speed makes them attractive for use as nanoscale transistors. But this and other properties are largely dependent on their structure, and their structure is determined when the nanotube is just beginning to form.

In a step toward understanding the factors that influence how nanotubes form, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the University of Maryland, and Texas A&M have succeeded in filming them when they are only a few atoms old. These nanotube “baby pictures” give crucial insight into how they germinate and grow, potentially opening the way for scientists to create them en masse with just the properties that they want.

A Dec. 1, 2014 NIST news release, which originated the news item, explains how scientists managed to make movies of SWCNTs as they formed,

To better understand how carbon nanotubes grow and how to grow the ones you want, you need to understand the very beginning of the growth process, called nucleation. To do that, you need to be able to image the nucleation process as it happens. However, this is not easy because it involves a small number of fast-moving atoms, meaning you have to take very high resolution pictures very quickly.

Because fast, high-resolution cameras are expensive, NIST scientists instead slowed the growth rate by lowering the pressure inside their instrument, an environmental scanning transmission electron microscope. Inside the microscope’s chamber, under high heat and low pressure, the team watched as carbon atoms generated from acetylene rained down onto 1.2-nanometer bits of cobalt carbide, where they attached, formed into graphene, encircled the nanoparticle, and began to grow into nanotubes.

“Our observations showed that the carbon atoms attached only to the pure metal facets of the cobalt carbide nanoparticle, and not those facets interlaced with carbon atoms,” says NIST chemist Renu Sharma, who led the research effort. “The burgeoning tube then grew above the cobalt-carbon facets until it found another pure metal surface to attach to, forming a closed cap. Carbon atoms continued to attach at the cobalt facets, pushing the previously formed graphene along toward the cap in a kind of carbon assembly line and lengthening the tube. This whole process took only a few seconds.”

According to Sharma, the carbon atoms seek out the most energetically favorable configurations as they form graphene on the cobalt carbide nanoparticle’s surface. While graphene has a mostly hexagonal, honeycomb-type structure, the geometry of the nanoparticle forces the carbon atoms to arrange themselves into pentagonal shapes within the otherwise honeycomb lattice. Crucially, these pentagonal irregularities in the graphene’s structure are what allows the graphene to curve and become a nanotube.

Because the nanoparticles’ facets also appear to play a deciding role in the nanotube’s diameter and chirality, or direction of twist, the group’s next step will be to measure the chirality of the nanotubes as they grow. The group also plans to use metal nanoparticles with different facets to study their adhesive properties to see how they affect the tubes’ chirality and diameter.

The researchers have made one of their movies available for viewing, but, despite my efforts, I cannot find a way to embed the silent movie. Happily, you can find the ‘baby carbon nanotube’ movie alongside NIST’s Dec. 1, 2014 NIST news release,

As for the research paper, here’s a link and a citation for it,

Nucleation of Graphene and Its Conversion to Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes by Matthieu Picher, Pin Ann Lin, Jose L. Gomez-Ballesteros, Perla B. Balbuena, and Renu Sharma. Nano Lett., 2014, 14 (11), pp 6104–6108 DOI: 10.1021/nl501977b Publication Date (Web): October 20, 2014

Copyright © 2014 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.