Raspberry-Colloid-Templated Catalysts as a Versatile and Stable Thermocatalytic Platform

Nanoparticle (NP)-supported catalysts are critical to the production of over 90% of the chemicals and raw materials used today. Their catalytic performance is predicated on a combination of geometric and electronic descriptors associated with the properties of the NPs, the support, and the interactions between them. However, existing catalyst preparative methods of nucleating or immobilizing NPs on support surfaces do not permit independent variation of either NP or support properties, as NP nucleation and growth characteristics are dependent on the support chemistry and vice versa. Consequently, such interconnected material properties cannot enable systematic investigations whereby individual NP or support properties are independently tuned to elucidate the catalytic role(s) of each structural or chemical descriptor or their combination thereof, especially if their contributions exert orthogonal effects on the catalytic performance.