Development of a cell for EXAFS studies in situ of automotive catalytic converters

This paper presents a new in situ X-ray reaction cell dedicated to in situ X-ray absorption studies of postcombustion catalytic converter. This device has been developed to collect Exafs spectra during the chemical reactions, the sample being placed under the flow of a complex mixture of reactive ga ses (NO, CO, N-2....). Particular attention has been paid to the material a nd the design of the sample holder. More precisely, a specific geometry of the sample holder has been elaborated in order to study directly the cataly st as it is in the converter. Also, we have tried here to respect the parti cular reaction conditions namely high temperature and high space velocity a ssociated to postcombustion.