Monitoring Milling Processes in Real-time

Wet milling is ubiquitous in a variety of materials manufacturing processes, including the production of supported catalysts. It is well known that the conditions can be adjusted to vary the physical and chemical properties of the resultant milled materials but the actual mechanisms that occur during the milling process have been difficult to observe or measure.

Now, Tomislav Friščič from McGill University, along with his colleagues there and at University of Cambridge, University of Zagreb, and the Max-Planc-Institute for Solid State Research, has reported experiments in which the milling process as applied to the mechanosynthesis of metal-organic frameworks. Although not directly related to the types of reactions typically encountered during catalyst preparation, their approach to studying the chemical and physical transformations may lead to a better understanding of these processes in the future. Indeed, a greater understanding of the mechanisms involved in the mechanosynthesis processes may in the future result in the synthesis of new catalytically active materials.