Tuesday, 13th September 2005 (4621 views)

Detailed research into how and why nanoclusters of gold act as chemical catalysts under dry conditions has been undertaken by the Georgia Institute of Technology.

In the 1980s, Japanese scientist Masatake Haruta found that gold nanoparticles were catalytically reactive, unlike larger amounts of gold, and that this process was actually aided by water.

Following Georgia Institue of Technology's earlier studies on gold nanoclusters, defects in the support surface were required to give the gold a slight negative charge. In this latest study, the presence of a water molecule makes that requirement unnecessary.

The water facilitates the binding of an oxygen molecule to an eight atom gold nanocluster by catalytically activating a low-temperature reaction that turns carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide.

The implications for science are huge: "We may be able to take other catalytic reactions and use water as a promoter under some selective conditions," comented researcher Angelo Bongiorno.

At present eliminating water from catalytic reactions is costly and any remaining water deactivates the catalyst. It is hoped that these new advances in understanding can be put to commercial use.

 

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