Tunability of the Adsorbate Binding on Bimetallic Alloy Nanoparticles for the Optimization of Catalytic Hydrogenation

摘要

In this paper, we show that PtAu and PdAu random alloy dendrimer-encapsulated nanoparticles with an average size of ~1.6 nm have different catalytic activity trends for allyl alcohol hydrogenation. Specifically, PtAu nanopartides exhibit a linear increase in activity with increasing Pt content, whereas PdAu dendrimer-encapsulated nanopartides show a maximum activity at a Pd content of ~60%. Both experimental and theoretical results suggest that this contrasting behavior is caused by differences in the strength of H binding on the PtAu and PdAu alloy surfaces. The results have significant implications for predicting the catalytic performance of bimetallic nanoparticles on the basis of density functional theory calculations.