A Facile Strategy to Support Palladium Nanoparticles on Carbon. Nanotubes ... collaborating with the group of Sarah Haigh at the University of Manchester, UK.
COVER PROFILE DOI: 10.1002/ejic.201400108
Read the full text of the article at 10.1002/ejic.201301585
A Facile Strategy to Support Palladium Nanoparticles on Carbon Nanotubes, Employing Polyvinylpyrrolidone as a Surface Modifier
Invited for the cover of this issue is the group of Pedro Camargo at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, collaborating with the group of Sarah Haigh at the University of Manchester, UK. The cover image shows the deposition of palladium nanoparticles (Pd NPs) on the surface of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by a simple strategy employing ethanol as the solvent/reducing agent, potassium tetrachloropalladate(II) (K2PdCl4) as the Pd precursor, and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as the surface modifier. In one word, how would you describe your research? Exciting! Our research is highly interdisciplinary and synergic! Our group got started in 2011, when I was hired as an Assistant Professor at the University of São Paulo. Since then, we have been aiming at employing concepts from all areas of chemistry to develop simple yet versatile approaches to nanomaterials capable of overcoming current challenges in catalysis and plasmonics, for example. We mainly focus on noble metal nanostructures and their hybrids with carbon nanotubes, titanium dioxide, and other semiconducting materials. We are fascinated with the possibility of using simple chemistry to develop strategies that enable precise control over size, shape, structure, and even composition for multimetallic systems. Collaboration with Dr. Sarah Haigh at the University of Manchester has provided access to high-resolution characterization of our nanostructures by using advanced electron microscopy imaging and analysis. This has provided greater insight into the complex range of factors that influence structure and properties at the nanoscale.
knowledge. When Sarah’s husband, David Pollard, a developer at Eiconic Games Ltd., heard about the research he was inspired to produce the artist impression used for our cover image! What other topics are you working on at the moment? We are working on the design of nanomaterials having bimetallic and trimetallic compositions as well as controlled architectures for applications in heterogeneous catalysis, plasmon-enhanced/mediated catalytic processes, electrocatalysis, and surface-enhanced Raman scattering sensing. We use scanning transmission electron microscopy to gain a deeper understanding of our novel nanomaterials, including three-dimensional compositional studies and in situ investigations of long-term stability.
What is the most significant result of this study? It is the straightforwardness of our method. We found that palladium nanoparticles below 5 nm in size could be uniformly supported over the surface of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) by simply employing ethanol as the solvent/reducing agent, potassium tetrachloropalladate(II) as the Pd precursor, and polyvinylpyrrolidone as the surface modifier. Analysis by electron microscopy gave impressive results, and the reported approach may serve as a platform for the synthesis of MWCNTs decorated with metal nanoparticles with well-defined morphologies and uniform dispersion for electrochemical and catalytic applications. How did the collaboration on this project start? The collaboration with Dr. Sarah Haigh’s group started in 2013 when I attended a workshop organized by the University of Manchester with the goal of fostering collaborations with Brazil. In addition, our groups collaborate in a variety of other topics. We also worked together in this project with Prof. Mauro Bertotti’s group at the University of São Paulo to perform electrocatalytic investigations. I believe that increasingly complex scientific problems call for an interdisciplinary approach to research not only to unravel existing scientific puzzles but also to create new
Eur. J. Inorg. Chem. 2014, 1422
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2014 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
