Atomic-scale engineering of metal–oxide interfaces for advanced catalysis using atomic layer deposition

Abstract

Metal–oxide interfaces play very critical roles in metal-catalyzed heterogeneous reactions. Atomic-level tailoring of the interfaces and discovering their atomic structures under reaction conditions are essentially important but remain challenging. Atomic layer deposition (ALD), owing to its unique character of molecular-level self-limiting surface reactions, exhibits great advantages in bottom-up synthesis of highly uniform heterogeneous catalysts with near-atomic precision, thus greatly facilitating atomic-level understanding of structure–activity relationships. In this review, we summarize the recent developments of atomic-scale engineering of metal–oxide interfaces using ALD for improved catalytic performance. Two main routes are discussed: (i) reducing the metal particle size to the subnanometre region, even to atomically dispersed metal atoms, and dimers; (ii) oxide overcoating of metal particles to construct three-dimensional interfaces, where atomic-scale engineering of the coverage of the oxide overcoat, site-selective blocking and construction of multi-metal–oxide interfaces are discussed. In this section, we highlight the in situ structural characterization of these atomically controlled interfaces and establishment of the relations between the interface structures and the enhanced catalytic performances in terms of activity, selectivity and stability.