Enzyme-Inspired Ligand Engineering of Gold Nanoclusters for Electrocatalytic Microenvironment Manipulation

Natural enzymes intricately regulate substrate accessibility through specific amino acid sequences and folded structures at their active sites. Achieving such precise control over the microenvironment has proven to be challenging in nanocatalysis, especially in the realm of ligand-stabilized metal nanoparticles. Here, we use atomically precise metal nanoclusters (NCs) as model catalysts to demonstrate an effective ligand engineering strategy to control the local concentration of CO2 on the surface of gold (Au) NCs during electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reactions (CO2RR). The precise incorporation of two 2-thiouracil-5-carboxylic acid (TCA) ligands within the pocket-like cavity of [Au25(pMBA)18]− NCs (pMBA =…

• AF
  Agency for Science, Technology and Research

  Award: U2102d2002
• NU
  National University of Singapore

  Award: CHI-P2023-01
• NR
  National Research Foundation Singapore

  Award: NRF-NRFF13-2021-0007
• MO
  Ministry of Education - Singapore

  Awards: R-279-000-580-112, A-8000054-01-00
• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 22071174, 22371204
• FR
  Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities