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The Influence of Alcohols in Driving the Morphology of Magnesium Chloride Nanocrystals
Author(s) -
Thushara K. S.,
D'Amore Maddalena,
Piovano Alessandro,
Bordiga Silvia,
Groppo Elena
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
chemcatchem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.497
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1867-3899
pISSN - 1867-3880
DOI - 10.1002/cctc.201700101
Subject(s) - gibbs free energy , magnesium , methanol , nanocrystal , catalysis , chemistry , chemical engineering , surface energy , morphology (biology) , crystal structure , inorganic chemistry , crystal (programming language) , ethanol , chloride , materials science , nanotechnology , crystallography , organic chemistry , thermodynamics , physics , engineering , programming language , genetics , biology , computer science
MgCl 2 nanocrystals prepared in the presence of methanol and ethanol were characterized by complementing surface‐science tools with a systematic quantum‐mechanical investigation of the stability order (in terms of Gibbs free energy) of different MgCl 2 surfaces in the presence of the two alcohols. Both alcohols drastically change the overall stability and the stability order of the exposed surfaces, mainly as a consequence of the entropic contribution to the Gibbs free energy, hence inhibiting or promoting crystal growth in certain directions. The environment‐dependent occurrence of the MgCl 2 surfaces may influence the structure and properties of the supported Ti x Cl 4− x sites in the MgCl 2 /TiCl 4 precatalyst, which has important implications in the design of morphologically controlled Ziegler–Natta catalysts.