Application of small-angle scattering for the identification of small amounts of platinum supported on porous silica Original Research Article

Pt-porous glass catalysts have been studied by small-angle X-ray scattering. The catalysts have been prepared by impregnating two micro- or mesoporous glasses with 0.1 wt% of Pt. Two different pore systems of the catalyst supports have been generated and investigated: on the one hand, the mesoporous structure is formed by finely dispersed colloidal silica inside a macroporous glass. On the other hand, micropores are given by the porous glass itself. The pure supports and the supported catalysts have been investigated via chord length analysis for a selected range order, based on the analysis of the scattering intensity for relatively large scattering vectors (up to the upper limit of SAS). The obtained specific structure parameters of both supported catalysts like dispersion, specific metal surface areas, basic arrangement, size distribution and volume fraction of the metal particles basically differ with both pore systems.