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Surface science

Catalytic hotspots get noisy

Nature volume 549, pages 34–35 (2017)Cite this article

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Identifying and imaging catalytically active sites on solid surfaces is a grand challenge for science. A microscopy technique has been developed that images 'noise' to detect active sites with nanometre-scale resolution. See Letter p.74

Electrocatalysts speed up reactions involving electrons and chemical species, and such reactions include those key to clean-energy technologies1. Discovering and engineering electrocatalysts is therefore a crucial step in the development of a carbon-neutral economy based on renewable fuels. The problem is that we often don't know how electrocatalysts work at the molecular level, or even where on the catalysts' surface reactions take place. On page 74, Pfisterer et al.2 report that the structure and location of the active sites on electrocatalyst surfaces — the positions at which the catalytic rate is the fastest — can be directly imaged with nanometre-scale resolution.

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Figure 1: An electrochemical scanning tunnelling microscope that resolves catalytic active sites.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Oregon, Eugene, 97403, Oregon, USA

    Christian Dette & Shannon W. Boettcher

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  1. Christian Dette
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  2. Shannon W. Boettcher
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Correspondence to Shannon W. Boettcher.

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Dette, C., Boettcher, S. Catalytic hotspots get noisy. Nature 549, 34–35 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/549034a

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