Lattice Compression Revealed at the ≈1 nm Scale

作者：Xu, Ziwei; Dong, Hongwei; Gu, Wanmiao; He, Zhen; Jin, Fengming; Wang, Chengming; You, Qing; Li, Jin; Deng, Haiteng; Liao, Lingwen^*; Chen, Dong^*; Yang, Jun^*; Wu, Zhikun^*

来源：Angewandte Chemie - International Edition, 2023, 62(39).

DOI：10.1002/anie.202308441

• CO2 Reduction
• Gold
• Heterogeneous Catalysis
• Lattice Compression
• Nanoclusters

Lattice tuning at the & AP;1 nm scale is fascinating and challenging; for instance, lattice compression at such a minuscule scale has not been observed. The lattice compression might also bring about some unusual properties, which waits to be verified. Through ligand induction, we herein achieve the lattice compression in a & AP;1 nm gold nanocluster for the first time, as detected by the single-crystal X-ray crystallography. In a freshly synthesized Au-52(CHT)(28) (CHT=S-c-C6H11) nanocluster, the lattice distance of the (110) facet is found to be compressed from 4.51 to 3.58 & ANGS; at the near end. However, the lattice distances of the (111) and (100) facets show no change in different positions. The lattice-compressed nanocluster exhibits superior electrocatalytic activity for the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) compared to that exhibited by the same-sized Au-52(TBBT)(32) (TBBT=4-tert-butyl-benzenethiolate) nanocluster and larger Au nanocrystals without lattice variation, indicating that lattice tuning is an efficient method for tailoring the properties of metal nanoclusters. Further theoretical calculations explain the high CO2RR performance of the lattice-compressed Au-52(CHT)(28) and provide a correlation between its structure and catalytic activity.

• 单位
  清华大学; 北京大学; 中国科学院