Precise Size Determination of Supported Catalyst Nanoparticles via Generative AI and Scanning Transmission Electron MicroscopyShow others and affiliations
2025 (English)In: Small Methods, E-ISSN 2366-9608, Vol. 9, no 3, article id 2401108Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) plays a crucial role in heterogeneous catalysis for assessing the size distribution of supported metal nanoparticles. Typically, nanoparticle size is quantified by measuring the diameter under the assumption of spherical geometry, a simplification that limits the precision needed for advancing synthesis-structure-performance relationships. Currently, there is a lack of techniques that can reliably extract more meaningful information from atomically resolved TEM images, like nuclearity or geometry. Here, cycle-consistent generative adversarial networks (CycleGANs) are explored to bridge experimental and simulated images, directly linking experimental observations with information from their underlying atomic structure. Using the versatile Pt/CeO2 (Pt particles centered approximate to 2 nm) catalyst synthesized by impregnation, large datasets of experimental scanning transmission electron micrographs and physical image simulations are created to train a CycleGAN. A subsequent size-estimation network is developed to determine the nuclearity of imaged nanoparticles, providing plausible estimates for approximate to 70% of experimentally observed particles. This automatic approach enables precise size determination of supported nanoparticle-based catalysts overcoming crystal orientation limitations of conventional techniques, promising high accuracy with sufficient training data. Tools like this are envisioned to be of great use in designing and characterizing catalytic materials with improved atomic precision. Automatic and precise nanoparticle size estimation of supported Pt particles in the Pt/CeO2 catalyst is achieved by combining generative AI with high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy. Synthetic data generated by a CycleGAN model proves to be representative as training data, ensuring good generalizability to experimental data of a downstream nanoparticle size-estimation network. image
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH , 2025. Vol. 9, no 3, article id 2401108
Keywords [en]
ceria; cyclegan; generative AI; heterogeneous catalysis; nanoparticles; platinum; scanning transmission electron microscopy
National Category
Computer graphics and computer vision
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-208444DOI: 10.1002/smtd.202401108ISI: 001324467900001PubMedID: 39359026Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105001091686OAI: oai:DiVA.org:liu-208444DiVA, id: diva2:1905502
Note
Funding Agencies|Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Frderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [200021_196381]; Swiss National Science Foundation
2024-10-142024-10-142025-09-19