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  • Strong metal-support interaction promoted scalable production of thermally stable single-atom catalysts.

Strong metal-support interaction promoted scalable production of thermally stable single-atom catalysts.

Nature communications (2020-03-11)
Kaipeng Liu, Xintian Zhao, Guoqing Ren, Tao Yang, Yujing Ren, Adam Fraser Lee, Yang Su, Xiaoli Pan, Jingcai Zhang, Zhiqiang Chen, Jingyi Yang, Xiaoyan Liu, Tong Zhou, Wei Xi, Jun Luo, Chaobin Zeng, Hiroaki Matsumoto, Wei Liu, Qike Jiang, Karen Wilson, Aiqin Wang, Botao Qiao, Weizhen Li, Tao Zhang
PMID32152283
ABSTRACT

Single-atom catalysts (SACs) have demonstrated superior catalytic performance in numerous heterogeneous reactions. However, producing thermally stable SACs, especially in a simple and scalable way, remains a formidable challenge. Here, we report the synthesis of Ru SACs from commercial RuO2 powders by physical mixing of sub-micron RuO2 aggregates with a MgAl1.2Fe0.8O4 spinel. Atomically dispersed Ru is confirmed by aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy and X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Detailed studies reveal that the dispersion process does not arise from a gas atom trapping mechanism, but rather from anti-Ostwald ripening promoted by a strong covalent metal-support interaction. This synthetic strategy is simple and amenable to the large-scale manufacture of thermally stable SACs for industrial applications.