Preparation of Cobalt Nanocrystals Supported on Metal Oxides To Study Particle Growth in Fischer-Tropsch Catalysts.

Colloidal synthesis of nanocrystals (NC) followed by their attachment to a support and activation is a promising route to prepare model catalysts for research on structure-performance relationships. Here, we investigated the suitability of this method to prepare well-defined Co/TiO and Co/SiO catalysts for the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis with high control over the cobalt particle size. To this end, Co-NC of 3, 6, 9, and 12 nm with narrow size distributions were synthesized and attached uniformly on either TiO or SiO supports with comparable morphology and Co loadings of 2-10 wt %.