Conquering Catalyst Complexity: Nanoparticle Synthesis and Instrument Development for Molecular and Atomistic Characterisation Under In Situ Conditions

Most heterogeneous, homogeneous and enzyme catalysts are nanoparticles. Conquering the complexity of such materials’ mode of operation at the atomic and molecular level necessitates being able to elucidate their structure under operational conditions. Here, we show examples of the crucial interplay of atomic or molecular resolution in situ techniques with atomically and molecularly well-defined nanoparticle catalysts to achieve this goal. In particular we focus on mono-dispersed metal nanoparticles in the 0.8–10 nm range with precise size distribution provided by modern colloidal synthetic techniques. These have been used in conjunction with a range of in situ techniques for understanding the complexity of a number of catalytic phenomena. Drawing on the nanoparticle size discrimination afforded by this approach, most metal nanoparticle catalysed covalent bond making/breaking reactions are identified as being structure sensitive, even when that was previously not thought to be the case. Small nanoparticles, below 2 nm, have been found to have changes of electronic structure that give rise to high oxidation state clusters under reaction conditions. These have been utilized to heterogenize typically homogeneous catalytic reactions using metal nanoclusters in the range of 40 atoms or less to carry out reactions on their heterogenized surfaces that would typically be expected only to occur at the higher oxidation state metal centre of a homogeneous organometallic catalyst. The combination of in situ techniques and highly controlled metal nanoparticle structure also allows valuable insights to be achieved in understanding the mechanisms of multicomponent catalysts, catalysis occurring in different fluid phases and phenomena occurring at the metal–oxide interface.