Structural Evolution Behaviors of Oxide Supported Metal Nanoparticles: A Brief Review

Abstract

The development of new heterogeneous catalysts with well-defined nanostructures has been the focus of chemical industry and academia. Oxide supported metal nanoparticle (NP) often encounters with dynamic structural evolutions under preparation and reaction conditions. Clarifying these structural evolution behaviors of metal NPs is an essential prerequisite for understanding their significant influence on catalytic activities and the rational design of high-performance heterogeneous catalysts. This review aims to delineate the advancements made in the last two decades for identifying the structural evolutions of supported NPs, with a particular focus on establishing the correlation between fundamental energetic descriptors and specific evolution pathways. We discuss how advanced in situ characterization techniques and computational simulations have uncovered the mechanisms by which factors including temperature, NP size, oxide reducibility, and adsorbates govern NP stability. Generally, the thermodynamic instability of NP can give rise to sintering, variations of the metal-oxide interaction can cause encapsulation, and the reactive adsorbates can result in structural fluctuations of NP or single-atom (SA) disintegration. Finally, the challenges and opportunities are proposed for further in-depth investigations on structural evolution issues of oxide supported metal NPs.