Determining the Ru speciation in a highly-active catalyst with low Ru-loading by EXAFS and XANES

We synthesised a Ru/MCM-41-structured aluminosilicate catalyst by employing N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligated RuAbstract:
complexes as precursors. Our final catalyst is extremely active for the C-O bond hydrogenolysis of diphenyl ether under mild conditions but
does not contain visible nanoparticles in HR-TEM imaging, suggesting the presence of sub-nanometer clusters or atomically dispersed Ru
species. Due to the low loading of the catalyst (0.05 wt%), typical techniques for analysis of Ru speciation, such as XPS and XRD, are not
applicable. Our proposed synchrotron work will investigate the electronic configuration of our catalyst using extended X-ray absorption fine
structure (EXAFS) and X-ray absorption near-edge structure spectroscopy (XANES) to determine the speciation of the Ru and give us insight
as to why our catalyst is so active and how it functions.