Popular aluminum oxide created by interlacing different crystal forms
Thursday, November 20, 2014 - 08:00
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org) —The exhaust system in your car and the plastic cup holding your drink, along with countless other products, rely upon reactions driven by catalysts supported on aluminum oxides. Characterizing these aluminum oxides or alumina has been challenging. For the first time, scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and FEI Company obtained an atomically resolved view of the alumina form known as delta alumina. Using experiments and computational approaches, the team showed that the oxide is two crystal forms or variants woven together.