Toward the Controlled Synthesis of Highly Dispersed Metal Clusters Enabled by Downsizing Crystalline Porous Organic Cage Supports

Liying Zhu; Suyun Zhang; Xin-Chun Yang; Qiang Zhuang; Jian-Ke Sun

doi:10.1002/smtd.202200591

Toward the Controlled Synthesis of Highly Dispersed Metal Clusters Enabled by Downsizing Crystalline Porous Organic Cage Supports

Small Methods. 2022 Aug;6(8):e2200591. doi: 10.1002/smtd.202200591. Epub 2022 Jun 16.

Authors

Liying Zhu¹, Suyun Zhang^{1

2}, Xin-Chun Yang³, Qiang Zhuang⁴, Jian-Ke Sun^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ MOE Key Laboratory of Cluster Science, Beijing Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic/Electrophotonic Conversion Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 102488, P. R. China.
² College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, P. R. China.
³ Institute of Technology for Carbon Neutrality, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenzhen, 518055, P. R. China.
⁴ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710072, P. R. China.
⁵ Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, Fujian, 350002, P. R. China.

PMID: 35708206
DOI: 10.1002/smtd.202200591

Abstract

The controlled synthesis of subnanometer-sized metal clusters (MCs) presents a fascinating prospect for the research of size-dependent properties. In this study, a facile approach by employing porous racemic organic cage crystals as supports for immobilizing a broad range of noble MCs (e.g., Ru, Ir, Rh) is reported. Downsizing the support to the nanoscale leads to resultant MCs with precisely controlled sizes < 0.7 nm. Such enhanced stabilization ability is a result of enhanced metal-support interactions as well as the nanoconfinement of organic cages in controlling the growth of MCs. Moreover, the obtained MCs display excellent catalytic performance in a series of liquid-phase reactions owing to a decrease in the diffusion resistance from the substrate to MCs immobilized by the nano-sized cage support.

Keywords: catalyses; metal clusters; porous organic cages; syntheses.

Abstract

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