Professor Zhu Yan, mesoscopic catalysis team of Nanjing University, has made new progress in the field of gold cluster catalysis

The catalytic performance of conventional gold nanoparticles catalyst is only a reflection of the overall effect of the catalyst due to its uneven size and diversified surface structure, which can not reflect the contribution of fine structure to the catalytic performance Moreover, the current spectroscopy technology reflects the average information of samples, so it is difficult to truly establish the corresponding relationship between the structure and catalytic performance of the catalyst at the atomic level Atomic precision gold cluster catalyst can realize the precise control of catalytic reaction and solve the problems that conventional gold catalyst can not solve Recently, Zhu Yan research group of Nanjing University has studied the unique selective catalysis of gold cluster catalyst with precise structure in the process of catalytic carbon dioxide conversion due to its structural matching, which has realized the control of CO 2 catalytic reaction path at the atomic level, so as to obtain C1 and C2 products: Au 9 catalyzes the hydrogenation of CO 2 mainly to obtain methane, Au 11 catalyzes the hydrogenation of CO 2 to obtain ethanol, Au 36 catalyzes the hydrogenation of CO 2 to obtain formic acid Experiments and calculations show that Au 9 catalyzes the production of methane mainly through the continuous hydrogenation of HCO * and H 2CO * species to obtain CHX species, and continues to hydrogenation to obtain methane; Au 11 catalyzes the production of ethanol mainly through the insertion of CO * species into CH 2 * to obtain carbon coupling; Au 36 catalyzes the production of formic acid mainly through the hydrogenation of HCOO * adsorbed species to obtain formic acid In this work, the influence of the precise structure of the gold cluster catalyst on the CO 2 conversion performance was investigated at the atomic level The selective control of CO 2 conversion to high value-added chemicals is of great scientific significance for the research of the conversion and utilization of greenhouse gas CO 2 This work was published in angel Chem Int ed (DOI: 10.1002 / anie 201913635) under the title of "controllable conversion of CO2 on non metallic gold clusters" Yang Dan, Ph.D student of Nanjing University, is the first author of this paper, Pei Wei of Dalian University of technology is the co first author, Zhou Si, Professor of the Zhao Jijun team of Dalian University of technology, is responsible for the calculation work, and Professor Ding Weiping, director of the mesoscopic catalysis team of Nanjing University, participated in the discussion This research is supported by NSFC, Jiangsu Province and Nanjing University.