Earth-abundant Ni-Zn nanocrystals for efficient alkyne semihydrogenation catalysis
- Jasper Clarysse
- Jordan De Jesus Silva
- Yunhua Xing
- Seraphine B. X. Y. Zhang
- Scott R. Docherty
- Nuri Yazdani
- Maksym Yarema
- Christophe Copéret
- Vanessa Wood
2025-05-12
The development of catalysts that are based on earth-abundant metals remains a grand challenge. Alloy nanocrystals (NCs) form an emerging class of heterogeneous catalysts, offering the promise of small, uniform catalysts with composition-control. Here, we report the synthesis of small Ni and bimetallic Ni-X (X= Zn, Ga, In) NCs for alkyne semihydrogenation catalysis. We show that Ni 3 Zn NCs are particularly reactive and selective under mild reaction conditions and at low loadings. While bimetallic NCs are all more selective than pure Ni NCs, Ni-Zn NCs also maintain excellent reactivity compared to Ni-Ga and Ni-In alloys. Ab-initio calculations can explain the differences in reactivity, indicating that, unlike Ga and In, Zn atoms interact with the substrates. We further show that Ni 3 Zn NCs are robust and tolerate a broad range of substrates, which may be linked to the favorable amine-terminated surface.