Electrocatalytic and photocatalytic applications of atomically precise gold-based nanoclusters
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tps://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-020-9902-4
SPECIAL TOPIC: Precise Catalysis Science and Technology
Electrocatalytic and photocatalytic applications of atomically precise gold-based nanoclusters Yongnan Sun, Xiao Cai, Weigang Hu, Xu Liu & Yan Zhu
*
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China Received August 03, 2020; accepted November 03, 2020; published online November 10, 2020
With advances in cluster chemistry, atomically precise gold nanoclusters (NCs) with well-defined composition and tunable structure provide an exciting opportunity to uncover the specific roles of the geometrical and electronic structures as well as the capped ligands in overall catalytic performances. The Au NCs possess quantum energy levels and unique optical properties, which have exhibited unexpected photocatalytic and electrocatalytic activities. In this review, we first highlight the electrocatalytic applications of Au NCs, including hydrogen evolution reaction, oxygen reduction reaction, CO2 reduction and catalytic oxidation reactions, and then present Au NCs-driven photocatalytic applications such as selective organic reactions, decomposition of pollutants and energy conversion reactions. Finally, we conclude this review with a brief perspective on the catalytic field of Au NCs. nanoclusters, atomic-level structure, electronic structure, electrocatalysis, photocatalysis Citation:
Sun Y, Cai X, Hu W, Liu X, Zhu Y. Electrocatalytic and photocatalytic applications of atomically precise gold-based nanoclusters. Sci China Chem, 2020, 63, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-020-9902-4
1 Introduction Au is highly inert, which was considered to have no catalytic activity. In 1987, Haruta et al. [1–3] found that Au nanoparticles supported on oxide supports exhibited highly catalytic activities for CO oxidation, which stimulated a great interest in Au catalysis. Currently, Au nanoparticles have been considered as one of the catalysts with very important industrial application prospects. They have showed unique catalytic performances on many reactions, such as selective hydrogenation, selective oxidation, photocatalytic and electrocatalytic reactions, etc [4–8]. However, a major issue with the traditional nanoparticles is that no two nanoparticles are completely same, which can hamper the precise correlation between the catalytic properties and structures of nanoparticles [9,10]. Therefore, structurally well-defined gold nanoclusters, determined by single-crystal X-ray crystal*Corresponding author (email: [email protected])
lography and mass spectrometry, offer us a platform to solve the central issue related to surface sciences at the atomic scale [11–14]. Atomically precise gold nanoclusters (NCs) (where we mainly focus on the thiolate-protected NCs denoted as Aun(SR)m NCs, and n and m represent the number of gold atoms and thiolate ligands, respectively) are composed of ranging from several to hundreds of gold atoms (equivalent the diameter from subnanometer to about 3 nm). As shown in Scheme 1, the a
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