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Size effect of RhPt bimetallic nanoparticles in catalytic activity of CO oxidation: Role of surface segregation

Year: 2012

Journal: Catalysis Today, 2012, 181 (1), 133-137, 20131009

Authors: Jeong Y. Park, Yawen Zhang, Sang Hoon Joo, Yousung Jung, Gabor A. Somorjai

Organizations: Graduate School of EEWS (WCU) and NanoCentury KI, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea; College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, and the State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications & PKU-HKU Joint Laboratory in Rare Earth Materials and Bioinorganic Chemistry, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; School of Nano-Bioscience and Chemical Engineering and KIER-UNIST Advanced Center for Energy, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Engineering (UNIST), UNIST-gil 50, Ulsan 689-798, Republic of Korea; Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States

We show that catalytic activity of bimetallic Rh0.5Pt0.5 nanoparticle arrays under CO oxidation can be tuned by varying the size of nanoparticles. The tuning of size of RhPt nanoparticles was achieved by changing the concentration of rhodium and platinum precursors in one-step polyol synthesis. We obtained two dimensional Rh0.5Pt0.5 bimetallic nanoparticle arrays in size between 5.7 nm and 11 nm. CO oxidation was carried out on these two-dimensional nanoparticle arrays, revealing higher activity on the smaller nanoparticles compared to the bigger nanoparticles. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) results indicate the preferential surface segregation of Rh compared to Pt on the smaller nanoparticles, which is consistent with our thermodynamic analysis. Because the catalytic activity is associated with differences in the rates of O2 dissociative adsorption between Pt and Rh, we suppose that the surface segregation of Rh on the smaller bimetallic nanoparticles is responsible for the higher catalytic activity in CO oxidation. This result suggests a control mechanism of catalytic activity via synthetic approaches for colloid nanoparticles, with possible application in rational design of nanocatalysts.