Scientists come closer to understanding an important chemical reaction
Together with colleagues from the Institute of General Physics named after A.M. Prokhorov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, MIET scientists have established how one of the stages of the ethylene epoxidation reaction occurs. In their opinion, this will improve the process of producing ethylene oxide, one of the most widely used substances in the chemical industry. The results of the study are published in the "The Journal of Physical Chemistry C" and "Physics of Wave Phenomena".
Ethylene epoxidation is one of the most important chemical reactions in production, as it forms ethylene oxide, a universal chemical intermediate, today it ranks as the 14th most produced organic chemical in the world. Ethylene oxide is necessary for the production of various types of plastics, rubber products and antiseptic compounds, said researchers from MIET.
"Adding chlorinated hydrocarbons to the ethylene oxide reaction increases the selectivity of the reaction almost twice, from 40-50% to 80-90%. Therefore, the task was to uncover the mechanism of this reaction at the level of individual atoms and molecules interaction, so it would improve the process of industrial synthesis of ethylene oxide," said Boris Loginov, head of the MIET's Research laboratory of atomic modification and surface analysis of semiconductors. Employees of MIET and the Center for Natural Science Research of the A.M. Prokhorov Institute of General Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the first time discovered a series of two-dimensional phase transitions on single-crystal faces of silver (110) and (111), as well as the surface reconstruction of silver (110) in interaction with molecular chlorine.
This result was obtained due to the creation of a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope GPI CRYO. It was developed by scientists from MIET, the Institute of General Physics, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and the V.A. Kotelnikov Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"For the first time ever, it was established how chlorine modifies the surface of a silver catalyst used in the ethylene epoxidation reaction, and thus we got closer to the nature of its active centers. The most important element of the microscope, which made it possible to achieve clear visualization of individual atoms and molecules, is the scanner developed at MIET," said Boris Andryushechkin, Head of the Surface physics laboratory of the Atomic Scale Technology Department of the Center for Natural Science Research at the A.M. Prokhorov Institute of General Physics. In the future, the team plans to conduct even more accurate experiments at temperatures below -268°C and obtain new information about interaction and position of atoms on the surface at various stages of a chemical reaction.
Source: RIA Novosti