Quantitative Description of Metal Center Organization and Interactions in Single-Atom Catalysts

Ultra-high-density single-atom catalysts (UHD-SACs) present unique opportunities for harnessing cooperative effects between neighboring metal centers. However, the lack of tools to establish correlations between the density, types, and arrangements of isolated metal atoms and the support surface pro...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Rossi, Kevin, Ruiz-Ferrando, Andrea, Akl, Dario Faust, Abalos, Victor Gimenez, Heras-Domingo, Javier, Graux, Romain, Hai, Xiao, Lu, Jiong, Garcia-Gasulla, Dario, López, Núria, Pérez-Ramírez, Javier, Mitchell, Sharon
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:2072/537469
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/2072/537469
https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202307991
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Química
54
Descripción
Sumario:Ultra-high-density single-atom catalysts (UHD-SACs) present unique opportunities for harnessing cooperative effects between neighboring metal centers. However, the lack of tools to establish correlations between the density, types, and arrangements of isolated metal atoms and the support surface properties hinders efforts to engineer advanced material architectures. Here, this work precisely describes the metal center organization in various mono- and multimetallic UHD‑SACs based on nitrogen-doped carbon (NC) supports by coupling transmission electron microscopy with tailored machine-learning methods (released as a user-friendly web app) and density functional theory simulations. This approach quantifies the non-negligible presence of multimers with increasing atom density, characterizes the size and shape of these low‑nuclearity clusters, and identifies surface atom density criteria to ensure isolation. Further, it provides previously inaccessible experimental insights into coordination site arrangements in the NC host, uncovering a repulsive interaction that influences the disordered distribution of metal centers in UHD-SACs. This observation holds in multimetallic systems, where chemically-specific analysis quantifies the degree of intermixing. These fundamental insights into the materials chemistry of single-atom catalysts are crucial for designing catalytic systems with superior reactivity.