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Reversible restructuring of supported Au nanoparticles during butadiene hydrogenation revealed by operando
David James Martin1, Donato Decarolis2, Yaroslav I Odarchenko2
1Department of Chemistry, University College London, 20 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AJ, UK. Andrew.Beale@ucl.ac.uk and Research Complex at Harwell (RCaH), Harwell, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0FA, UK and Van't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1098XH, Netherlands.
Abstract:
Periodically arranged, monodisperse gold nanoparticles supported on flat silicon substrates were studied for the hydrogenation of 1,3-butadiene under operando conditions using Grazing Incidence Small- and Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (GISAXS/GIWAXS). It was found that the composition and shape of the nanoparticles depends very much on the chemical environment; the particles are shown to be dynamic, undergoing reversible size and shape change particularly during catalytic reaction, highlighting a dynamism often not observed in traditional studies. Specifically, the size of the Au nanoparticles increases during butadiene hydrogenation and this is attributed to the partial removal of a Au2O3 at the metal-oxide interface and consequential shape change of the nanoparticle from a more hemispherical particle to a particle with a larger height to width ratio.
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