UV-Raman characterizations of MoO3/ZrO2 catalysts with extremely low MoO3 loadings

UV-Raman spectroscopy was first used and proved to be a powerful tool for the characterization of the surface molybdenum oxide species supported on ZrO2, especially for samples with extremely low MoO3 loadings due to the Raman bands of the surface molybdenum oxide species are greatly enhanced by this method. Only one kind of molybdenum oxide species was detected in samples with very low to near a mono-layer coverage of MoO3 loading, and it is suggested that the structure of the highly dispersed molybdenum species is inevitably related to the structure of the support.