Precious metal nanomaterials are relevant for almost any type of catalysis. Precious metal nanoparticles are typically supported on another material and in recent years colloidal precious metal nanoparticles have shown to be ideal system to perform fundamental catalytic studies. We believe that our surfactant-free colloidal approach will help to bridge the gap academia-industry. Surfactant-free nanoparticles are more simply functionalized to develop hybrid homogeneous-heterogeneous catalysts. Surfactant-free nanoparticles are often more active than the state-of-the-art. While proof of concepts have been made in particular for electro-catalytic applications, it is now time to explore further these features for more systems. See examples here.

Our interest in this direction is to keep exploring the benefits of colloidal surfactant-free nanoparticles.
In a first range of applications are energy conversion reactions and electrocatalysis at broad, such as reactions with small molecules (e.g. oxygen evolution reaction ORR, oxygen evolution reaction OER, and possibly ultimately CO₂ reduction reaction CO₂RR or nitrogen reduction reaction NRR) or small organic molecules oxidations  (e.g. methanol oxidation reaction MOR, ethanol oxidation reaction EOR or formic acid oxidation FAO). Since there is a lot to explore, we are very open to receiving input from interested collaborators and prospective team members.

In a second range of applications are all sort of liquid and gas phase heterogeneous catalytic processes where our colloidal surfactant-free precious metal nanoparticles supported on various support materials, with tuned nanoparticle size, composition, loading and so interparticle distances, can be relevant. See examples here. Since there is a lot to explore we are very open to receiving input from interested collaborators and prospective team members.