Professor Huang Weixin and Associate Professor Zhang Wenhua of the University of science and technology of China have made important progress in the field of catalytic activity site-resolved nanocrystalline model catalytic system

Professor Huang Weixin, School of chemistry and materials science, University of science and technology of China, in cooperation with Associate Professor Zhang Wenhua, has made important progress in the research of catalytic activity site-resolved nanocrystalline model catalytic system, revealing the contribution of size dependent nanocrystalline surface and edge position to catalytic activity in cubic Cu 2O nanocrystalline catalytic CO oxidation reaction system The research results were published in angew Chem Int ed (angew Chem Int ed., 2019, 58, 4276-4280) under the title of "site resolved Cu 2 O catalysis in CO oxidation" Different kinds of surface sites are usually exposed on the supported nanoparticle catalysts It is a challenging task to identify the catalytic performance of each site and its contribution to the activity of the catalysts In the early stage, Professor Huang Weixin independently proposed to study the structure performance relationship and catalytic mechanism of the working catalyst under the conditions as close as possible to the real catalytic reaction with the homogeneous oxide nanocrystals as the model catalyst In this work, the author further developed the catalyst strategy based on the same morphology and different sizes of cubic Cu 2O nanocrystalline model, and realized the research of oxide catalysis with the resolution of nanocrystalline surface position and edge position A series of cubic Cu 2O nanocrystals with uniform size, ranging from ~ 1029nm to ~ 34nm, were synthesized It was observed that with the decrease of size, the edge density increases and the adsorption behavior can be observed In the CO oxidation reaction under the condition of oxygen enrichment, the surface of cubic Cu 2O nanocrystals is reconstructed to form CuO thin films The macro kinetics of the catalytic reaction, including the apparent activation energy, the reaction order to CO / O 2 and the apparent pre exponential factor, shows a significant size dependence The clear experimental evidence shows that the main surface site contributing to the catalytic activity is from the large-scale cubic Cu 2O The surface position of nanocrystals is transformed into the edge position of small-size cubic Cu 2O nanocrystals The results of the cooperative theoretical calculation by Associate Professor Zhang Wenhua support the intrinsic catalytic activity and reaction mechanism of the model catalyst with different surface and edge positions, and the macro kinetics derived from the theoretical calculation of the catalytic reaction mechanism is consistent with the macro kinetics measured by the experiment The results show that the intrinsic catalytic activity and surface site density of different surface sites of nanoparticles together determine their contribution to the catalytic activity of catalysts, which is of great significance for understanding the complex catalytic reaction system The corresponding author of this paper is Professor Huang Weixin, and the first author is Zhang Zhenhua, a graduate of the Department of chemical physics The research was supported by the national major scientific research program of the Ministry of science and technology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Yangtze River distinguished professor program of the Ministry of education and the Suzhou nanotechnology collaborative innovation center.