Experimental and Computational Study Toward Identifying Active Sites of Supported SnO Nanoparticles for Electrochemical CO Reduction Using Machine-Learned Interatomic Potentials.

SnO has received great attention as an electrocatalyst for CO reduction reaction (CORR), however; it still suffers from low activity. Moreover, the atomic-level SnO structure and the nature of the active sites are still ambiguous due to the dynamism of surface structure and difficulty in structure characterization under electrochemical conditions. Herein, CORR performance is enhanced by supporting SnO nanoparticles on two common supports, vulcan carbon and TiO.

Recover the activity of sintered supported catalysts by nitrogen-doped carbon atomization.

The sintering of supported metal nanoparticles is a major route to the deactivation of industrial heterogeneous catalysts, which largely increase the cost and decrease the productivity. Here, we discover that supported palladium/gold/platinum nanoparticles distributed at the interface of oxide supports and nitrogen-doped carbon shells would undergo an unexpected nitrogen-doped carbon atomization process against the sintering at high temperatures, during which the nanoparticles can be transformed into more active atomic species. The in situ transmission electron microscopy images reveal the abundant nitrogen defects in carbon shells provide atomic diffusion sites for the mobile atomistic palladium species detached from the palladium nanoparticles.

Structural evolution induced by Au atom diffusion in AgS.

Atom diffusion processes govern the structure and composition of core-shell nanomaterial, which play a crucial role in determining their properties. By using aberration-corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and X-ray absorption near-edge structure spectroscopy in combination with in situ X-ray diffraction, we confirm that single-atom diffusion of Au to Ag2S occurs, and that the transition from the Au@Ag2S core-shell nanostructure to AuAgS-AuAgx or Ag3AuS2-AuAgx heterostructures was observed. Moreover, the phase of the ternary sulfide induced by Au single-atom diffusion in Ag2S is determined by the ratio of Au and Ag, thus exhibiting a significant difference in the photocatalytic activity performance.

Two-Step Carbothermal Welding To Access Atomically Dispersed Pd on Three-Dimensional Zirconia Nanonet for Direct Indole Synthesis.

Herein, we report a novel carbothermal welding strategy to prepare atomically dispersed Pd sites anchored on a three-dimensional (3D) ZrO nanonet (Pd@ZrO) via two-step pyrolysis, which were evolved from isolated Pd sites anchored on linker-derived nitrogen-doped carbon (Pd@NC/ZrO). First, the NH-HBDC linkers and Zr-based [Zr(μ-O)(μ-OH)] nodes of UiO-66-NH were transformed into amorphous N-doped carbon skeletons (NC) and ZrO nanoclusters under an argon atmosphere, respectively. The NC supports can simultaneously reduce and anchor the Pd sites, forming isolated Pd-N/C sites.

Pt Ni Wavelike Nanowires with High Activity for Oxygen Reduction Reactions.

Platinum (Pt)-based nanostructures are the most efficient catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in acid media. Here, Pt Ni wavelike nanowires (W-NWs) have been synthesized by etching Pt Ni@PtNi core-shell nanowires with 2,5-dihydroxyterephthalic acid for 24 hours. Compared to the commercial Pt/C catalyst, the free-standing Pt Ni W-NWs show improvements of up to 9.