Surfactant-Free Precious Metal Colloidal Nanoparticles for Catalysis

Abstract

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Colloidal syntheses of nanoparticles (NPs) are one of the preferred approaches to prepare precious metal catalysts. Unfortunately, most colloidal syntheses developed require stabilizing agents to avoid NP agglomeration and/or control NP size and morphology. While these surfactants can bring positive features, they typically block catalytically active sites on the NP surface. As a consequence, these additives often need to be removed by energy and/or time consuming steps, at the risk of complicating the synthesis, introducing irreproducibility and negatively altering the structure and properties of the prepared catalysts. Fortunately, several surfactant-free colloidal syntheses have been reported and are being developed. This Mini Review addresses the challenges in defining a surfactant-free colloidal synthesis of NPs and survey established and emerging strategies to obtain surfactant-free colloidal precious metal NPs. A focus is given to approaches that show promising features to bridge the gap between fundamental and applied research towards industrial applications.

Keywords

• nanoparticles
• precious metals
• colloids
• surfactant-free
• catalysis
• polyols