Transient and general synthesis of high-density and ultrasmall nanoparticles on two-dimensional porous carbon via coordinated carbothermal shock

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 2294 - 12
• Main Authors: Shi, Wenhui, Li, Zezhou, Gong, Zhihao, Liang, Zihui, Liu, Hanwen, Han, Ye-Chuang, Niu, Huiting, Song, Bo, Chi, Xiaodong, Zhou, Jihan, Wang, Hua, Xia, Bao Yu, Yao, Yonggang, Tian, Zhong-Qun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 21-04-2023; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 140/133; 140/146; 147/137; 147/143; 639/301/299/886; 639/301/357/551; 639/925/357/354; Agglomeration; Carbon; Carbon dioxide; Catalysis; Catalysts; Chemical synthesis; Chromium; Cobalt; Coordination compounds; Copper; Dispersion; Energy technology; Fabrication; High density; Humanities and Social Sciences; Iron; Ligands; Manganese; Metal air batteries; multidisciplinary; Nanoparticles; Oxygen; Precursors; Pyrolysis; Redox reactions; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Silver; Water splitting
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38023-5

Carbon-supported nanoparticles are indispensable to enabling new energy technologies such as metal-air batteries and catalytic water splitting. However, achieving ultrasmall and high-density nanoparticles (optimal catalysts) faces fundamental challenges of their strong tendency toward coarsening and agglomeration. Herein, we report a general and efficient synthesis of high-density and ultrasmall nanoparticles uniformly dispersed on two-dimensional porous carbon. This is achieved through direct carbothermal shock pyrolysis of metal-ligand precursors in just ~100 ms, the fastest among reported syntheses. Our results show that the in situ metal-ligand coordination (e.g., N → Co
2+
) and local ordering during millisecond-scale pyrolysis play a crucial role in kinetically dominated fabrication and stabilization of high-density nanoparticles on two-dimensional porous carbon films. The as-obtained samples exhibit excellent activity and stability as bifunctional catalysts in oxygen redox reactions. Considering the huge flexibility in coordinated precursors design, diversified single and multielement nanoparticles (M = Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Cr, Mn, Ag, etc) were generally fabricated, even in systems well beyond traditional crystalline coordination chemistry. Our method allows for the transient and general synthesis of well-dispersed nanoparticles with great simplicity and versatility for various application schemes.
Well-dispersed nanoparticles are critical for catalysis but face challenges of easy agglomeration. Here the authors report synthesis of ultrasmall nanoparticles anchored on two-dimensional porous carbon via coordinated carbothermal shock and the application of resulted nanoparticles as catalysts for oxygen electrocatalysis.