A Top-Down Strategy to Realize Surface Reconstruction of Small-Sized Platinum-Based Nanoparticles for Selective Hydrogenation.

Over the past decades, despite the substantial efforts that have been devoted to the modifications of Pt nanoparticles (NPs) to tailor their selectivities for hydrogenation reactions, there are still a lack of facile strategies for precisely regulation of the surface properties of NPs, especially for those with small sizes. In this work, we propose a top-down thermal annealing strategy for tuning the surface properties of Pt-based NPs (≈4 nm) without the occurrence of aggregation. Compared to conventional bottom-up methods, the present top-down strategy can precisely regulate the surface compositions of Pt-Cd NPs and other ternary Pt-Cd-M NPs (M=Fe, Ni, Co, Mn, and Sn). The optimized Pt-Cd NPs exhibit excellent selectivity toward phenylacetylene and 4-nitrostyrene hydrogenations with a styrene selectivity and 4-aminophenyl styrene selectivity of 95.2 % and 94.5 %, respectively. This work provides a general strategy for the surface reconstructions of Pt-based NPs, and promotes fundamental research on catalyst design for heterogeneous catalysis.