Atom-by-atom fabrication of metal clusters for efficient selective hydrogenation

• 作者: Yalin Guo Botao Qiao
• 来源期刊: 中国科学：化学（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2022,（2）
• 所属期刊栏目: HIGHLIGHTS
• 页码范围: 202-203
• 页数: 2页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Supported metal catalysts,in which the metal is usually fi-nely dispersed into nanoparticles(NPs)in size of a few nanometers on high-surface-area materials,are the work-horses in heterogeneous catalysis and have been extensively used in various key industrial processes[1].However,the surface heterogeneity arising from the uneven size distribu-tion as well as the lower atomic efficiency derived from the presence of unexposed interior atoms of metal NPs often leads to inferior activity/selectivity.On the other hand,the recently emerged single-atom catalysts(SACs),consisting of isolated metal atoms singly dispersed on supports,have at-tracted intensive attention due to their various advantages in comparison with NPs,including the maximized atomic ef-ficiency and relatively homogenous active sites[2,3].Nevertheless,the lack of cooperation from neighboring metal atoms may suppress the intrinsic activity of SACs in certain reactions.Therefore,the supported ultra-small clus-ters containing a few metal atoms that can provide catalytic sites with collective metal atoms and meanwhile maintain full atomic utilization efficiency,often being called as sup-ported atomically dispersed catalysts(SADCs)or fully ex-posed cluster catalysts(FECCs)[4],are regarded as the next generation of catalysts to bridge SACs and metal NPs.However,practically fabricating and stabilizing these clus-ters,especially with identical structure,remain a daunting challenge.