Rare earth / noble metal nanocatalysts, which have broad applications in environmental protection, sustainable energies, and chemicals industry, have attracted intensive research interests in recent years. In this field, the precise control of the active structures at atom level by engineering the composition, size, shape and metal-support interface is a key to the development of high-performance catalysts. In this presentation, I will summarize our recent progresses both in the development of controllable synthetic methods for preparing well-defined nanostructures of CeO2, Pt and Ru based catalysts, and in the understanding of the structure-activity correlation of the prepared catalysts at molecular level in some small molecule activation reactions (e.g., CO oxidation, CO2 hydrogenation, C2H5OH electro-oxidation). Assisted by some modern advanced characterization instrumentation including operando spectroscopy and synchrotron radiation technique, together with theoretical simulation, we concluded that the enhancement of catalytic performances for these nanocatalysts can be realized by tuning the effects of doping, alloying and faceting, and metal-support interactions in the catalysts during the probe reactions. Our works thus offer useful rationales on the rational design, atom-scale construction, and controllable synthesis of novel solid nanocatalyst applied in many other heterogeneous reactions.

Atom-level control of active structures of rare earth/noble metal nanocatalysts for enhanced catalytic properties

256th National Meeting (2018)

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