(105a) Well-Controlled Nanosynthesis Approaches for Optimized (Photo)Catalytic Materials

Heterogeneous supported metal catalysts are typically synthesized by depositing metal salts onto porous mechanically stable supports. These approaches produce metal particles with a range of shapes and sizes, which results in catalytic active sites that are characterized by highly variable activity and selectivity.  In this contribution we highlight the use of recent advances in solution-based metal nanoparticle synthesis for optimizing catalytic performance, studying underlying mechanisms and facilitating the design of new catalytic and photo-catalytic materials. We focus on two examples of utilizing well-controlled solution based synthesis approaches for tailoring catalytic and photo-catalytic functionality of metallic nanoparticles.

In the first example, we control the size and shape of metal nanoparticles to produce active catalytic materials with a homogeneous and predictable distribution of active sites. Our studies show that metal nanoparticles particles of controlled size and shape not only represent promising heterogeneous catalysts for selective production of chemicals, but also act as a critical platform to study heterogeneous catalytic processes and to identify crucial factors that impact process selectivity. 

In the second example, we synthesized bimetallic nanoparticle architectures with various geometries (core-shell structures with epitaxial and non-epitaxial shells) and compositions. The geometry of the bimetallic nanostructures was controlled by varying the rate and mechanism of secondary metal nucleation on the seed nanocrystals. The optical properties and catalytic functionality of the materials were optimized through the programmable variation of the bimetallic architecture to develop a novel photo-catalytic material platform.