What is it about?

Platinum is an important material for catalysts. We have shown how platinum particles get encapsulated by titanium dioxide at high temperatures and how this encapsulating layer transforms when the surrounding gas is changed. We used electron microscopy to get movies that show the transformation with a resolution that allows us to see atoms.

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Why is it important?

Catalysts need to become more efficient to transform our society to environmentally friendly processes and make optimal use of the available resources. The transformation of platinum by treatments at high temperature is a very important step to make catalysts more efficient. With our study, we give important insights into how the catalysts is transformed. Now, that we understand these transformation, we can develop new strategies to make more efficient catalysts.

Perspectives

I think this work is very interesting because it could be the origin of so many further research that now can be performed. Since a single research group never has sufficient capacity nor expertise, I think, it is important to spread the new insights to researchers in various fields to employ these findings. Besides this significance, the work combines various high-end methods to unveil the behavior of platinum nanoparticles. I think this combination is a very nice showcase how to combine these methods to retrieve a holistic view on a scientific problem.

Arik Beck
ETH Zürich, D-CHAB

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This page is a summary of: The dynamics of overlayer formation on catalyst nanoparticles and strong metal-support interaction, Nature Communications, June 2020, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17070-2.
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