Uplifting promoters in catalysis: the art of metal nanoparticles

催化方面令人振奋的推动者：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，如果没有催化剂，有形生活的任何方面几乎都是不可能的。一种“好的”催化剂意味着一种技术能够以尽可能低的能耗和废物产生实现。单一元素很少有足够的效率，催化的世界在很大程度上依赖于促进剂的使用，其他元素或物质来促进催化作用。全世界的科学家都在努力从元素周期表中寻找新的组合，以改进现有的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都含有铂族金属，这种金属既稀缺又昂贵，但效率很高，部分原因是它具有激活氢的杰出能力，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稀土元素取代或大幅减少还原催化中pt族金属的数量。***要讨论的示例性启动子是铈，它被称为氧化催化中的有效催化剂或启动子，最近关于其氢化能力的报道很少。为了设计出最高效的催化剂，我们不仅要关注添加剂是什么，而且同样重要的是，通过如何引入添加剂，我们将应用胶体化学技术来合成基于二氧化铈的双金属高级催化材料。我们相信，我们的催化剂制备合成方法“金属纳米颗粒的艺术”可能会在各种还原性应用中带来前所未有的效果，例如维生素和香水合成的氢化，燃料和生物质升级的氢解等。研究愿景和拟议的计划旨在促进发现的临界质量，将“催化剂-促进剂”混合的范式转变为“合理促进”，以使现有工艺的催化剂改进和新兴和未知技术的催化剂发现成为可能。在政策变化方面，一个典型的影响是加拿大对地球上丰富的铈的资源意识勘探的潜在推进，这意味着创造就业机会和明显的社会经济效益

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.**