Nanomaterials in catalysis

摘要

Following today’s trends, the hallowed term ‘nano’ now appears quite often in the titles of manynarticles related to heterogeneous catalysis. Moreover, while worldwide the ‘nano’ era seems to benslowly coming to closure,1 for catalysis, the situation is definitely quite different. In fact, evennindustrial catalysis has been exploiting nanoparticles and nanoporous materials since its verynbeginning at the dawn of the 20th century. Nanoparticles as well as nanopores are typically presentnin most commercial catalysts which are manufactured annually in the amounts of hundreds ofnthousands of tons globally and widely used in chemical, petrochemical and refining industries asnwell as in environmental technologies, including neutralisation of exhaust gases of motor vehicles.nIn all of these catalysts, the particles of the catalytically active component (metal or metal oxide),nwith typical size in the range 1–10 nm, are located on the surface or within the pores of materialsncalled catalyst supports (alumina, silica, zeolites, carbon, etc.). The annual industrial production ofnchemicals, motor fuels, etc., made using these catalysts amounts to many hundreds of millions ofntons with an overall cost of more than US$1 trillion. For this reason, it is a pleasure to refer again tonour Editor in Chief who said that ‘most nanoscience which is connected to gigatechnologies wouldnhave been an appropriate driver for publicly funded science’.1