Squeezing information about ThO2 nanoparticles’ size and shape from high resolution XANES

Extracting information on the size and shape of very small nanoparticles (NPs) is not a trivial task and it is fundamental to push the analysis of the available techniques to extract as much in-formation as possible from the available data. In this perspective we present a detailed modelling of Th L3 edge high resolution XANES collected on ThO2 NPs showing how the size and shape of the NP impacts the spectral shape.
Nanoparticles of ThO2 with average size between 2 and 35 nm were synthesized by chemical precipitation and measured at Th L3 edge with High-Energy Resolution Fluorescence Detected (HERFD) XANES. The HERFD-XANES spectrum of NPs with diameter above 2.5 nm are all very similar, while for NPs below 2.5 nm the first post edge feature is missing. In order to un-derstand what this absence could be correlated to, we performed a series of simulations with the FDMNES code on particles of different shape and with size close to 2 – 2.5 nm. We considered three possible shapes and cut the structures from ThO2 bulk. As a first approximation we did not consider disorder at the surface, but only the effects induced by size and shape. After cutting the NPs from the bulk, the symmetry of the crystal is lowered and different Th atoms have different local environment. We set the cutoff radius of our simulations to 6 Å and identified the groups of equivalent Th atoms by comparing the local environment of each Th up to 6 Å. To fully characterize the XANES of the NP under study, a separate simulation per equivalent Th atom was performed with the FDMNES code.
By comparing the simulations of Th atoms at the surface and inside the NP it clearly emerges that the first post edge feature is particularly sensitive to the number of Th second nearest neigh-bors. The spectrum of a specific shape is given by the weighted average of all the different Th in the NP. Considering that the shape determines how many Th with a specific local environment will be present, each shape results in a different final spectrum. By comparing the data and the simulations we suggest that the ThO2 NP with diameter below 2.5 nm have octahedral shape.