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New gold standard: weakly capped infant Au nanoclusters with record high catalytic activity for 4-nitrophenol reduction and hydrogen generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture

Increasing the surface area-to-volume ratio of materials through size reduction is a desired approach to access maximum possible surface sites in applications such as catalysis. However, increase in the surface energy with the decrease in dimension warrants strong ligands to stabilize nanosystems, w...

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Autores principales: Patra, Dinabandhu, Nalluri, Srinivasa Rao, Tan, Hui Ru, Saifullah, Mohammad S. M., Ganesan, Ramakrishnan, Gopalan, Balaji
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: RSC 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9417437/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36132016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/d0na00639d
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author Patra, Dinabandhu
Nalluri, Srinivasa Rao
Tan, Hui Ru
Saifullah, Mohammad S. M.
Ganesan, Ramakrishnan
Gopalan, Balaji
author_facet Patra, Dinabandhu
Nalluri, Srinivasa Rao
Tan, Hui Ru
Saifullah, Mohammad S. M.
Ganesan, Ramakrishnan
Gopalan, Balaji
author_sort Patra, Dinabandhu
collection PubMed
description Increasing the surface area-to-volume ratio of materials through size reduction is a desired approach to access maximum possible surface sites in applications such as catalysis. However, increase in the surface energy with the decrease in dimension warrants strong ligands to stabilize nanosystems, which mask the accessibility of the active surface sites. Owing to this, the realization of the true potential of a catalyst's surface remains challenging. Here, we employed a rationally designed strategy to synthesize infant Au nanoclusters—that alleviates the requirement of any separate ligand removal step—to unleash their actual potential to register a record high maximum turn-over frequency (TOF(max)) of 72 900 h(−1) and 65 500 h(−1) in the benchmark catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol and catalytic H(2) generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture, respectively. Such a phenomenal catalytic activity has been realized via the synthesis and stabilization of Au nanoclusters using solid citric acid and a super-concentrated aqueous AuCl(3) solution, a pathway entirely different from the conventional modifications of the Turkevich and Brust methods. The crux of the synthetic strategy lies in precise control of the water content and thereby ensuring that the final Au nanoclusters remain in the solid state. During the synthesis, citric acid not only acts as a reducing agent to yield ‘infant’ Au nanoclusters but also provides a barrier matrix to arrest their growth. In solution, its weak capping ability and rapid dissolution allows the reactants to easily access the active sites of Au nanoclusters, thus leading to faster catalysis. Our study reveals that the true potential of metal nanoclusters as catalysts is actually far higher than what has been reported in the literature.
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spelling pubmed-94174372022-09-20 New gold standard: weakly capped infant Au nanoclusters with record high catalytic activity for 4-nitrophenol reduction and hydrogen generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture Patra, Dinabandhu Nalluri, Srinivasa Rao Tan, Hui Ru Saifullah, Mohammad S. M. Ganesan, Ramakrishnan Gopalan, Balaji Nanoscale Adv Chemistry Increasing the surface area-to-volume ratio of materials through size reduction is a desired approach to access maximum possible surface sites in applications such as catalysis. However, increase in the surface energy with the decrease in dimension warrants strong ligands to stabilize nanosystems, which mask the accessibility of the active surface sites. Owing to this, the realization of the true potential of a catalyst's surface remains challenging. Here, we employed a rationally designed strategy to synthesize infant Au nanoclusters—that alleviates the requirement of any separate ligand removal step—to unleash their actual potential to register a record high maximum turn-over frequency (TOF(max)) of 72 900 h(−1) and 65 500 h(−1) in the benchmark catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol and catalytic H(2) generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture, respectively. Such a phenomenal catalytic activity has been realized via the synthesis and stabilization of Au nanoclusters using solid citric acid and a super-concentrated aqueous AuCl(3) solution, a pathway entirely different from the conventional modifications of the Turkevich and Brust methods. The crux of the synthetic strategy lies in precise control of the water content and thereby ensuring that the final Au nanoclusters remain in the solid state. During the synthesis, citric acid not only acts as a reducing agent to yield ‘infant’ Au nanoclusters but also provides a barrier matrix to arrest their growth. In solution, its weak capping ability and rapid dissolution allows the reactants to easily access the active sites of Au nanoclusters, thus leading to faster catalysis. Our study reveals that the true potential of metal nanoclusters as catalysts is actually far higher than what has been reported in the literature. RSC 2020-09-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9417437/ /pubmed/36132016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/d0na00639d Text en This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
spellingShingle Chemistry
Patra, Dinabandhu
Nalluri, Srinivasa Rao
Tan, Hui Ru
Saifullah, Mohammad S. M.
Ganesan, Ramakrishnan
Gopalan, Balaji
New gold standard: weakly capped infant Au nanoclusters with record high catalytic activity for 4-nitrophenol reduction and hydrogen generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture
title New gold standard: weakly capped infant Au nanoclusters with record high catalytic activity for 4-nitrophenol reduction and hydrogen generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture
title_full New gold standard: weakly capped infant Au nanoclusters with record high catalytic activity for 4-nitrophenol reduction and hydrogen generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture
title_fullStr New gold standard: weakly capped infant Au nanoclusters with record high catalytic activity for 4-nitrophenol reduction and hydrogen generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture
title_full_unstemmed New gold standard: weakly capped infant Au nanoclusters with record high catalytic activity for 4-nitrophenol reduction and hydrogen generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture
title_short New gold standard: weakly capped infant Au nanoclusters with record high catalytic activity for 4-nitrophenol reduction and hydrogen generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture
title_sort new gold standard: weakly capped infant au nanoclusters with record high catalytic activity for 4-nitrophenol reduction and hydrogen generation from an ammonia borane–sodium borohydride mixture
topic Chemistry
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9417437/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36132016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/d0na00639d
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