In Situ Studies of the Formation of Tungsten and Niobium Oxide Nanoparticles: Towards Automated Analysis of Reaction Pathways from PDF Analysis Using the Pearson Correlation Coefficient

Invited for this month's cover are the groups of Kirsten M. O. Jensen at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) and Simon J. L. Billinge at Columbia University (US). The cover picture shows a sketch of the formation process of metal oxide nanoparticles, where nanocrystalline oxides form from fragments of e.g., polyoxometalates. In situ X-ray total scattering studies with Pair Distribution Function analysis can give new insights into the formation process, as it provides structural information on all stages of the reaction - from precursor ions in solution, over amorphous or nanostructured intermediates to the final crystalline material. Here, it is show how the analysis of such data can be automated using structure mining and simple computational tools. Read the full text of their Research Article at 10.1002/cmtd.202200034.