Metal-support interaction in catalysis: The influence of the morphology of a nano-oxide domain on catalytic activity

Using wet chemistry synthesis methods we prepared nanodumbbell structures as a model oxide supported metal catalyst. In this peculiar configuration, a single metallic domain (M) is connected to a single metal oxide (MOx) one. The size, composition and morphology of each domain can be carefully controlled, allowing us to investigate the effects resulting from a hollow morphology of the MOx domains, while all other material’s properties were kept constant. We chose the CO oxidation as a model oxidation reaction and increasing the population of nanocrystals (NCs) with hollow oxide domains resulted in a decrease in catalytic activity. Despite the manipulation of oxide morphology affected the surface charge of the Au domain, the bulk oxide reducibility and the crystallinity of the nanosized oxide support, the rate limiting step of CO oxidation was not affected. The same apparent activation energy was indeed measured independently from the population of NCs with hollow oxide domains. The difference in catalytic performance was thus ascribed to a different number of interfacial active sites when the morphology evolved from full to hollow.