Nanofluidic Trapping of Faceted Colloidal Nanocrystals for Parallel Single-Particle Catalysis
Journal article, 2022

Catalyst activity can depend distinctly on nanoparticle size and shape. Therefore, understanding the structure sensitivity of catalytic reactions is of fundamental and technical importance. Experiments with single-particle resolution, where ensemble-averaging is eliminated, are required to study it. Here, we implement the selective trapping of individual spherical, cubic, and octahedral colloidal Au nanocrystals in 100 parallel nanofluidic channels to determine their activity for fluorescein reduction by sodium borohydride using fluorescence microscopy. As the main result, we identify distinct structure sensitivity of the rate-limiting borohydride oxidation step originating from different edge site abundance on the three particle types, as confirmed by first-principles calculations. This advertises nanofluidic reactors for the study of structure-function correlations in catalysis and identifies nanoparticle shape as a key factor in borohydride-mediated catalytic reactions.

first-principles calculations

single nanoparticle catalysis

nanofluidics

fluorescence microscopy

nanoparticle trapping

colloidal Au nanocrystals

Author

Sune Levin

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Chemical Biology

Sarah Lerch

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Astrid Boje

Chalmers, Physics, Chemical Physics

Joachim Fritzsche

Chalmers, Physics, Chemical Physics

Sriram Kesarimangalam

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Chemical Biology

Henrik Ström

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Fluid Dynamics

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Kasper Moth-Poulsen

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies

Institute of Material Science of Barcelona (ICMAB)

Henrik Sundén

University of Gothenburg

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Anders Hellman

Chalmers, Physics, Chemical Physics

Fredrik Westerlund

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Chemical Biology

Christoph Langhammer

Chalmers, Physics, Chemical Physics

ACS Nano

1936-0851 (ISSN) 1936-086X (eISSN)

Vol. 16 9 15206-15214

The Sub-10 nm Challenge in Single Particle Catalysis

Swedish Research Council (VR) (2018-00329), 2019-01-01 -- 2024-12-31.

Subject Categories

Other Chemistry Topics

Biocatalysis and Enzyme Technology

Organic Chemistry

DOI

10.1021/acsnano.2c06505

PubMed

36054658

More information

Latest update

3/7/2024 9