Abstract
The strength of metal-support bonding in heterogeneous catalysts determines their thermal stability, therefore, a tremendous amount of effort has been expended to understand metal-support interactions. Herein, we report the discovery of an anomalous "strong metal-support bonding" between gold nanoparticles and "nano-engineered" Fe3O4 substrates by in situ microscopy. During in situ vacuum annealing of Au-Fe3O4 dumbbell-like nanoparticles, synthesized by the epitaxial growth of nano-Fe3O4 on Au nanoparticles, the gold nanoparticles transform into the gold thin films and wet the surface of nano-Fe3O4, as the surface reduction of nano-Fe3O4 proceeds. This phenomenon results from a unique coupling of the size-and shape-dependent high surface reducibility of nano-Fe3O4 and the extremely strong adhesion between Au and the reduced Fe3O4. This strong metal-support bonding reveals the significance of controlling the metal oxide support size and morphology for optimizing metal-support bonding and ultimately for the development of improved catalysts and functional nanostructures.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 4576-4582 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Nano Letters |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 9 2017 |
Keywords
- Heterogeneous catalysis
- density functional theory
- electron microscopy
- gold catalyst
- metalâsupport interaction