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Updated: Oct 26, 2025

Synthesis of Metal Nanoparticles Supported on Carbon Nanotube with Doped Co and N Atoms and its Catalytic Applications in Hydrogen Production
Published on: December 6, 2021
Synergizing metal-support interactions and spatial confinement boosts dynamics of atomic nickel for hydrogenations
Jian Gu1, Minzhen Jian1, Li Huang2
1Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Department of Chemical Physics, Key Laboratory of Surface and Interface Chemistry and Energy Catalysis of Anhui Higher Education Institutes, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
Abstract:
Atomically dispersed metal catalysts maximize atom efficiency and display unique catalytic properties compared with regular metal nanoparticles. However, achieving high reactivity while preserving high stability at appreciable loadings remains challenging. Here we solve the challenge by synergizing metal-support interactions and spatial confinement, which enables the fabrication of highly loaded atomic nickel (3.1 wt%) along with dense atomic copper grippers (8.1 wt%) on a graphitic carbon nitride support. For the semi-hydrogenation of acetylene in excess ethylene, the fabricated catalyst shows extraordinary catalytic performance in terms of activity, selectivity and stability-far superior to supported atomic nickel alone in the absence of a synergizing effect. Comprehensive characterization and theoretical calculations reveal that the active nickel site confined in two stable hydroxylated copper grippers dynamically changes by breaking the interfacial nickel-support bonds on reactant adsorption and making these bonds on product desorption. Such a dynamic effect confers high catalytic performance, providing an avenue to rationally design efficient, stable and highly loaded, yet atomically dispersed, catalysts.
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