Synthesis of Pd nanocrystals enclosed by {100} facets and with sizes <10 nm for application in CO oxidation

The catalytic activity of noble-metal nanocrystals is mainly determined by their sizes and the facets exposed on the surface. For single crystals, it has been demonstrated that the Pd(100) surface is catalytically more active than both Pd(110) and Pd(111) surfaces for the CO oxidation reaction. Here we report the synthesis of Pd nanocrystals enclosed by {100} facets with controllable sizes in the range of 6-18 nm by manipulating the rate of reduction of the precursor. UV-vis spectroscopy studies indicate that the rate of reduction of Na₂PdCl₄ can be controlled by adjusting the concentrations of Br^- and Cl^- ions added to the reaction mixture. Pd nanocrystals with different sizes were immobilized on ZnO nanowires and evaluated as catalysts for CO oxidation. We found that the activity of this catalytic system for CO oxidation showed a strong dependence on the nanocrystal size. When the size of the Pd nanocrystals was reduced from 18 nm to 6 nm, the maximum conversion rate was significantly enhanced by a factor of ~10 and the corresponding maximum conversion temperature was lowered by ~80 °C.