Uplifting promoters in catalysis: the art of metal nanoparticles

催化中的提升促进剂：金属纳米颗粒的艺术*日常维生素和抗癌药物、塑料和卫生产品、固定和移动废气处理、燃料生产等几乎没有任何有形生活的方面如果没有催化剂是可能的。“好的”催化剂意味着一项技术能够以尽可能低的能源消耗和废物产生。单一的元素很少有足够的效率，而催化世界在很大程度上依赖于促进剂的使用，其他元素或物质可以增强催化作用。世界各地的科学家都在努力从元素周期表中寻找新的组合，以改进现有催化剂或为新兴技术设计新的催化剂。*许多当代工业催化剂包括铂族金属，这些金属稀有且昂贵，但效率非常高，部分原因是它具有出色的激活氢的能力，氢是化学转化中最重要的分子之一。我们的目标是用加拿大资源丰富的地球元素来取代或大幅减少还原催化中的铂族金属的数量。*需要解决的典型促进剂是Ce3+，它被认为是氧化催化中的有效催化剂或促进剂，最近关于其加氢能力的报道很少。为了设计最有效的催化剂，我们将不仅关注添加剂是什么，而且同样重要的是，通过它是如何引入的，它位于哪里，我们将应用胶体化学技术来合成氧化铈基双金属先进催化材料。我们相信，我们的合成催化剂制备方法“金属纳米颗粒的艺术”可能会在各种还原应用中产生前所未有的效果，如维生素和香水合成的氢化、燃料的氢解和生物质提质等。*从长远来看，研究愿景和拟议的计划旨在促进大量发现，将“催化剂-促进剂”混合的范式转变为“合理促进”，以实现现有工艺的催化剂改进和新兴和未知技术的催化剂发现。在政策变化方面的一个典型影响是加拿大对地球上丰富的Ce3+的资源意识勘探的潜在进展，这意味着创造就业机会和明显的社会经济利益。

Uplifting promoters in catalysis: the art of metal nanoparticles******Daily vitamins and cancer drugs, plastics and hygiene products, stationary and mobile exhaust treatments, fuel production, etc. there is virtually no aspect of tangible life that would be possible without catalysts. A “good” catalyst implies that a technology is enabled at the lowest possible energy consumption and waste generation. Single elements are rarely efficient enough, and the world of catalysis relies heavily on the use of promoters other elements or substances that boost the catalytic action. Scientists all over the world strive to find new combinations from across the periodic table to improve the existing catalysts or design new ones for emerging technologies.***Many contemporary industrial catalysts include platinum-group metals that are scarce and expensive but very efficient, in part because of the outstanding ability to activate hydrogen, one of the most important molecules in chemical transformations. We aim to replace or dramatically reduce the amount of Pt-group metals in reductive catalysis by Earth-abundant elements with significant resources in Canada. ***The exemplary promoter to be addressed is cerium, which is known as an efficient catalyst or promoter in oxidative catalysis, with very few recent reports on its hydrogenating ability. In order to design the most efficient catalysts, we will concentrate not only on WHAT the additive is, but, of equal importance, WHERE it is located via HOW it is introduced, and we will apply colloidal chemistry techniques to synthesize ceria-based bimetallic advanced catalytic materials. We believe that our synthetic approach to catalyst preparation “the art of metal nanoparticles” may result in unprecedented effects of cerium in a variety of reductive applications, such as hydrogenations for vitamin and perfume synthesis, hydrogenolysis in fuel and biomass upgrading, etc. ***In the long term, the research vision and the proposed program aim to contribute to a critical mass of discoveries to shift the paradigm of “catalyst-promoter” mixing to “rational promotion” to enable catalyst improvement for existing processes and catalyst discoveries for emerging and yet unknown technologies. An exemplary impact in terms of policy change is the potential advancement of resource-conscious exploration of Earth-abundant cerium in Canada, implying job creation and obvious socio-economic benefits.**