Characterization and chemical design of oxide surfaces

This paper attempts to review recent and representative work dealing with single crystals, flat surfaces, and even designed surfaces relevant to oxide catalysis. These surfaces can provide novel information on the key issues in catalytic research such as the structure and composition of active sites, ensembles and phases, behavior of adsorbed active species, electronic property participating in catalysis, etc. which are well characterized by recent in-situ spectroscopy and also by traditional spectroscopy. The paper is also devoted to selected topics in the field describing the detail. Organized assembly of the knowledge of characterizations integrated over both molecular catalytic chemistry of powder catalysts and catalytic surface science of model surfaces would allow us to move toward the ultimate goal of rational catalyst design.