The Influence of Alcohols in Driving the Morphology of Magnesium Chloride Nanocrystals

Abstract

Abstract MgCl 2 nanocrystals prepared in the presence of methanol and ethanol were characterized by complementing surface‐science tools with a systematic quantum‐mechanical investigation of the stability order (in terms of Gibbs free energy) of different MgCl 2 surfaces in the presence of the two alcohols. Both alcohols drastically change the overall stability and the stability order of the exposed surfaces, mainly as a consequence of the entropic contribution to the Gibbs free energy, hence inhibiting or promoting crystal growth in certain directions. The environment‐dependent occurrence of the MgCl 2 surfaces may influence the structure and properties of the supported Ti x Cl 4− x sites in the MgCl 2 /TiCl 4 precatalyst, which has important implications in the design of morphologically controlled Ziegler–Natta catalysts.