Aging amorphous/crystalline heterophase PdCu nanosheets for catalytic reactions

Hongfei Cheng; Nailiang Yang; Xiaozhi Liu; Qinbai Yun; Min Hao Goh; Bo Chen; Xiaoying Qi; Qipeng Lu; Xiaoping Chen; Wen Liu; Lin Gu; Hua Zhang

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwz078

Aging amorphous/crystalline heterophase PdCu nanosheets for catalytic reactions

Natl Sci Rev. 2019 Oct;6(5):955-961. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwz078. Epub 2019 Jul 5.

Authors

Hongfei Cheng¹, Nailiang Yang^{1

2}, Xiaozhi Liu^{3

4}, Qinbai Yun¹, Min Hao Goh⁵, Bo Chen¹, Xiaoying Qi⁵, Qipeng Lu^{1

6}, Xiaoping Chen⁷, Wen Liu⁷, Lin Gu^{3

4

8}, Hua Zhang^{1

9}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Programmable Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore.
² State Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
³ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
⁴ School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
⁵ Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, ASTAR, Singapore 638075, Singapore.
⁶ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China.
⁷ School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637459, Singapore.
⁸ Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan 523808, China.
⁹ Department of Chemistry, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.

Abstract

Phase engineering is arising as an attractive strategy to tune the properties and functionalities of nanomaterials. In particular, amorphous/crystalline heterophase nanostructures have exhibited some intriguing properties. Herein, the one-pot wet-chemical synthesis of two types of amorphous/crystalline heterophase PdCu nanosheets is reported, in which one is amorphous phase-dominant and the other one is crystalline phase-dominant. Then the aging process of the synthesized PdCu nanosheets is studied, during which their crystallinity increases, accompanied by changes in some physicochemical properties. As a proof-of-concept application, their aging effect on catalytic hydrogenation of 4-nitrostyrene is investigated. As a result, the amorphous phase-dominant nanosheets initially show excellent chemoselectivity. After aging for 14 days, their catalytic activity is higher than that of crystalline phase-dominant nanosheets. This work demonstrates the intriguing properties of heterophase nanostructures, providing a new platform for future studies on the regulation of functionalities and applications of nanomaterials by phase engineering.

Keywords: aging; amorphous/crystalline heterophase; catalysis; nanosheets; selective hydrogenation.