Solid-liquid-gas reaction accelerated by gas molecule tunnelling-like effect

Wen Wang; Tao Xu; Jige Chen; Junyi Shangguan; Hui Dong; Huishu Ma; Qiubo Zhang; Junwei Yang; Tingting Bai; Zhirui Guo; Haiping Fang; Haimei Zheng; Litao Sun

doi:10.1038/s41563-022-01261-x

Solid-liquid-gas reaction accelerated by gas molecule tunnelling-like effect

Nat Mater. 2022 Aug;21(8):859-863. doi: 10.1038/s41563-022-01261-x. Epub 2022 May 26.

Authors

Wen Wang^#^{1

2

3}, Tao Xu^#¹, Jige Chen^#^{4

5}, Junyi Shangguan^{2

6}, Hui Dong⁷, Huishu Ma⁵, Qiubo Zhang², Junwei Yang⁸, Tingting Bai⁹, Zhirui Guo⁹, Haiping Fang¹⁰, Haimei Zheng^{11

12}, Litao Sun¹³

Affiliations

¹ SEU-FEI Nano-Pico Center, Key Laboratory of MEMS of Ministry of Education, Collaborative Innovation Center for Micro/Nano Fabrication, Device and System, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
² Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
³ School of Mechanics and Safety Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China.
⁴ Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Zhangjiang Laboratory, Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
⁵ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁷ Key Laboratory of Welding Robot and Application Technology of Hunan Province, Engineering Research Center of Complex Tracks Processing Technology and Equipment of Ministry of Education, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, China.
⁸ School of Arts and Sciences, Shanghai Dianji University, Shanghai, China.
⁹ The Second Affiliated Hospital, Key Laboratory for Aging & Disease, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
¹⁰ School of Physics and National Engineering Research Center of Industrial Wastewater Detoxication and Resource Recovery, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China. fanghaiping@sinap.ac.cn.
¹¹ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. hmzheng@lbl.gov.
¹² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. hmzheng@lbl.gov.
¹³ SEU-FEI Nano-Pico Center, Key Laboratory of MEMS of Ministry of Education, Collaborative Innovation Center for Micro/Nano Fabrication, Device and System, Southeast University, Nanjing, China. slt@seu.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 35618827
DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01261-x

Abstract

Solid-liquid-gas reactions are ubiquitous and are encountered in both nature and industrial processes^1-4. A comprehensive description of gas transport in liquid and following reactions at the solid-liquid-gas interface, which is substantial in regard to achieving enhanced triple-phase reactions, remains unavailable. Here, we report a real-time observation of the accelerated etching of gold nanorods with oxygen nanobubbles in aqueous hydrobromic acid using liquid-cell transmission electron microscopy. Our observations reveal that when an oxygen nanobubble is close to a nanorod below the critical distance (~1 nm), the local etching rate is significantly enhanced by over one order of magnitude. Molecular dynamics simulation results show that the strong attractive van der Waals interaction between the gold nanorod and oxygen molecules facilitates the transport of oxygen through the thin liquid layer to the gold surface and thus plays a crucial role in increasing the etching rate. This result sheds light on the rational design of solid-liquid-gas reactions for enhanced activities.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Gold*
Microscopy, Electron, Transmission
Oxygen
Surface Properties
Water*

Substances

Water
Gold
Oxygen