A general synthesis approach for amorphous noble metal nanosheets.

Nat Commun

Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Department of Applied Chemistry, Center of Advanced Nanocatalysis (CAN), University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, Anhui, People's Republic of China.

Published: October 2019

AI Article Synopsis

  • Noble metal nanomaterials are usually used as catalysts, which help chemical reactions happen faster.
  • Most methods for making these materials create solid crystals, but making a different form called amorphous (non-crystal) nanostructures is hard.
  • This study shows a new way to create thin amorphous noble metal nanosheets that work better for oxygen reactions, and they perform much better than the usual crystalline forms.

Article Abstract

Noble metal nanomaterials have been widely used as catalysts. Common techniques for the synthesis of noble metal often result in crystalline nanostructures. The synthesis of amorphous noble metal nanostructures remains a substantial challenge. We present a general route for preparing dozens of different amorphous noble metal nanosheets with thickness less than 10 nm by directly annealing the mixture of metal acetylacetonate and alkali salts. Tuning atom arrangement of the noble metals enables to optimize their catalytic properties. Amorphous Ir nanosheets exhibit a superior performance for oxygen evolution reaction under acidic media, achieving 2.5-fold, 17.6-fold improvement in mass activity (at 1.53 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode) over crystalline Ir nanosheets and commercial IrO catalyst, respectively. In situ X-ray absorption fine structure spectra indicate the valance state of Ir increased to less than + 4 during the oxygen evolution reaction process and recover to its initial state after the reaction.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6813339PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12859-2DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

noble metal
20
amorphous noble
12
metal nanosheets
8
oxygen evolution
8
evolution reaction
8
noble
6
metal
6
general synthesis
4
synthesis approach
4
amorphous
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!