Atomically Precise Gold Nanoclusters as New Model Catalysts

Many industrial catalysts involve nanoscale metal particles (typically 1-100 nm), and understanding their behavior at the molecular level is a major goal in heterogeneous catalyst research. However, conventional nanocatalysts have a nonuniform particle size distribution, while catalytic activity of nanoparticles is size dependent. This makes it difficult to relate the observed catalytic performance, which represents the average of all particle sizes, to the structure and intrinsic properties of individual catalyst particles. To overcome this obstacle, catalysts with well-defined particle size are highly desirable. In recent years, researchers have made remarkable advances in solution-phase synthesis of…