Gold-catalyzed reduction of metal ions for core-shell structures with subnanometer shells
Qing Zeng, Danye Liu, Hui Liu, Lin Xu, Penglei Cui, Dong Chen, Jing Wang, Jun Yang
Abstract
Construction of core-shell nanostructures with ultrathin shells is a powerful way to leverage the lattice strain effect to enhance surface activity for a given catalytic reaction. Herein, we report a gold-catalyzed approach for growing a large variety of subnanometer-thick metal shells of up to several atomic layers on the gold cores. This strategy relies on a gold-catalyzed reduction of various metal precursors, in both aqueous and organic solvents, in which the metal atoms nucleate on the gold seed surfaces instead of self-nucleating in the solution. In addition, by coupling this gold catalysis with the galvanic replacement reaction, the ultrathin shell composition could be tuned to further optimize the lattice strain effect in the shell layer. This provides an effective way to equip the core-shell nanostructures with the desired catalytic performance in some key electrochemical reactions, for example, the ethanol oxidation reaction and oxygen reduction reaction.