Professor Liang Hai-Wei (USTC), Lin Yue (USTC) and Chu Sheng-Qi (Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS) reported the use of mesoporous sulfur-doped carbons (meso_S-C) with high specific area as supports to achieve a series of high-loading atomically dispersed noble metal catalysts, including Pt, Ir, Rh, Ru and Pd, and the loading of Pt and Ir reached to 10 wt%. The result was published in Science Advances (Sci. Adv., 2019,5, eaax6322). In this work, the researchers prepared high sulfur-content (~14 wt%) meso_S-C with large BET surface area (>1200 m² g^-1) via transition metal-assisted carbonization of molecular precursors, and successfully synthesized five atomically dispersed noble metal catalysts with traditional wet-impregnation strategy over meso_S-C. X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) carried out at 1W1B-XAFS station of Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility, is one of the strongest tools to characterize atomically dispersed catalysts due to no metal-metal bond exist in these catalysts, while the metal-metal bond should be detected in nano clusters or nano particles. This work may open a new gate for fabricating high-loading atomically dispersed metal catalysts with a general strategy.

Fig. Schematic illustration of the preparation and model structure of the atomically dispersed noble metal catalysts.

Article：

Lei Wang, Ming-Xi Chen, Qiang-Qiang Yan, Shi-Long Xu, Sheng-Qi Chu*, Ping Chen, Yue Lin*, Hai-Wei Liang*. A sulfur-tethering synthesis strategy toward high-loading atomically dispersed noble metal catalysts. Sci. Adv. 2019, 5: eaax6322.