Nature Communications ( IF 14.7 ) Pub Date : 2020-03-27 , DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15391-w Ran Du 1 , Jinying Wang 2 , Ying Wang 3 , René Hübner 4 , Xuelin Fan 1 , Irena Senkovska 5 , Yue Hu 3 , Stefan Kaskel 5 , Alexander Eychmüller 1
Amongst various porous materials, noble metal aerogels attract wide attention due to their concurrently featured catalytic properties and large surface areas. However, insufficient understanding and investigation of key factors (e.g. reductants and ligands) in the fabrication process limits on-target design, impeding material diversity and available applications. Herein, unveiling multiple roles of reductants, we develop an efficient method, i.e. the excessive-reductant-directed gelation strategy. It enables to integrate ligand chemistry for creating gold aerogels with a record-high specific surface area (59.8 m2 g−1), and to expand the composition to all common noble metals. Moreover, we demonstrate impressive electrocatalytic performance of these aerogels for the ethanol oxidation and oxygen evolution reaction, and discover an unconventional organic-ligand-enhancing effect. The present work not only enriches the composition and structural diversity of noble metal aerogels, but also opens up new dimensions for devising efficient electrocatalysts for broad material systems.
中文翻译:
揭示制造贵金属气凝胶的还原剂化学,以实现优异的析氧和乙醇氧化
在各种多孔材料中,贵金属气凝胶因其兼具催化性能和大比表面积而受到广泛关注。然而,对制造过程中的关键因素(例如还原剂和配体)的理解和研究不足限制了目标设计,阻碍了材料多样性和可用应用。在此,通过揭示还原剂的多重作用,我们开发了一种有效的方法,即过量还原剂引导的凝胶化策略。它能够整合配体化学来制造具有创纪录的高比表面积(59.8 m 2 g -1 )的金气凝胶,并将其成分扩展到所有常见的贵金属。此外,我们展示了这些气凝胶在乙醇氧化和析氧反应中令人印象深刻的电催化性能,并发现了非常规的有机配体增强效应。目前的工作不仅丰富了贵金属气凝胶的组成和结构多样性,而且为设计用于广泛材料系统的高效电催化剂开辟了新的维度。