It is a challenge associated with control of catalyst activation and deactivation by only an atom, as it is almost impossible to precisely abstract a central atom from a conventional catalyst and analyze its catalysis. Herein the research group of Yan Zhu explore for the first time the catalysis of one central atom using Au24 and Au25 clusters as model catalysts to catalyze methane conversion to methanol. The only difference in atomic structure of the two clusters is that Au24 misses a central atom. We demonstrate that catalytic performance can be significantly changed by one-central-atom removal and addition. More importantly, the activity can be reversibly switched by losing the central atom and filling the central vacancy, which effectively avoids the irreversibility of catalytic capability and improves the durability.
The work entitled“Reversible Switching of Catalytic Activity by Shuttling an Atom into and out of Au Nanoclusters” has been published in Angewandte Chemie (2019, 58, 9964–9968). The work apparently impacts one’s understanding of the contributions of individual atoms on different sites of a catalyst to the catalytic performance and providesdesign rules on how to control catalytic performance of a catalyst by one-atom removal and addition.
