Grain rotation and lattice deformation during photoinduced chemical reactions revealed by in situ X-ray nanodiffraction

• Published in: Nature materials Vol. 14; no. 7; pp. 691 - 695
• Main Authors: Huang, Zhifeng, Bartels, Matthias, Xu, Rui, Osterhoff, Markus, Kalbfleisch, Sebastian, Sprung, Michael, Suzuki, Akihiro, Takahashi, Yukio, Blanton, Thomas N., Salditt, Tim, Miao, Jianwei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01-07-2015; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/301/930/12; 639/925/357; Biomaterials; Chemical reactions; Condensed Matter Physics; Crystal growth; Deformation; Diffraction; Diffraction patterns; Grains; Lattices; letter; Materials Science; Nanomaterials; Nanotechnology; Optical and Electronic Materials; Physics; Temporal resolution; Transmission electron microscopy; X-ray diffraction; X-rays
• ISSN: 1476-1122; 1476-4660
• DOI: 10.1038/nmat4311

An
in situ
X-ray nanodiffraction technique allows for the real-time study of the photoinduced chemical reaction to produce Ag from AgBr, and can spatially resolve structural changes at the submicrometre scale with a time resolution of 5 ms.
In situ
X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) have been used to investigate many physical science phenomena, ranging from phase transitions, chemical reactions and crystal growth to grain boundary dynamics
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
,
5
,
6
. A major limitation of
in situ
XRD and TEM is a compromise that has to be made between spatial and temporal resolution
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
,
5
,
6
. Here, we report the development of
in situ
X-ray nanodiffraction to measure high-resolution diffraction patterns from single grains with up to 5 ms temporal resolution. We observed, for the first time, grain rotation and lattice deformation in chemical reactions induced by X-ray photons: Br
−
+
hv
→ Br + e
−
and e
−
+ Ag
+
→ Ag
0
. The grain rotation and lattice deformation associated with the chemical reactions were quantified to be as fast as 3.25 rad s
−1
and as large as 0.5 Å, respectively. The ability to measure high-resolution diffraction patterns from individual grains with a temporal resolution of several milliseconds is expected to find broad applications in materials science, physics, chemistry and nanoscience.