Center News
When a Good Nanoparticle Goes Bad
CCMR Staff :: Nov 10, 2008
ITHACA, NY (CCMR Staff) -- Understanding how nanoparticles change form may help solve energy needs
Nanoscale metal particles are used to speed up or "catalyze" many processes, such as the conversion of chemical energy to electricity in fuel cells or the reduction of pollution in automobile catalytic converters. Since these tiny particles naturally have a wide variety of shapes and sizes, chemists have always suspected that some particles work much better than others. To test this hypothesis, Cornell researchers invented a way to watch individual molecules react with a single nanoscale particle of gold in real time. They found that some gold particles are very good catalysts, while others are less reactive. More surprisingly, they found that the properties of individual particles change with time — a good catalyst sometimes spontaneously turns into a bad catalyst! Understanding this conversion and stabilizing the "good" particles may lead to the development of more efficient catalysts for a wide range of problems, including those important to the global energy challenge.
W. Xu, J. S. Kong, Y.-T. E. Yeh, P. Chen, “Single-Molecule Nanocatalysis Reveals Heterogeneous Reaction Pathways and Catalytic Dynamics,” Nature Materials, DOI: 10.1038/nmat2319.
