Recently, new progress about the in situ Raman study of heterogeneous catalysis has been achieved by the cooperation among Prof. Jian-Feng Li’s, Prof. Bing-Hui Chen’s and Prof. Gang Fu’s groups from Xiamen University. Related work entitled “In situ dynamic tracking of heterogeneous nanocatalytic processes by shell-isolated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy” has been publish in Nature Communications on 24 May, 2017 (Nature Communications, 2017, 8, 15447).

                 

In situ study of the dynamic processes of catalytic reactions is of great importance for understanding of reaction mechanisms and design of efficient catalysts. Due to the ultrahigh surface sensitivity, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) can provide rich surface molecular information on the catalysts under working conditions. However, only few metals like Au, Ag, Cu with special nanostructures can support strong SERS effects. Such disadvantages significantly limit the application of SERS in practical heterogeneous catalysis. In this work, the authors develop a general method for in situ monitoring of heterogeneous catalytic processes through shell-isolated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SHINERS) satellite nanocomposites (Au-core silica-shell nanocatalyst-satellite structures). By combining operando SHINERS with density functional theory calculations, active species such as surface oxides, oxygen species and Pd–C/Pt–C bonds are directly observed during CO oxidation on Pt- and Pd-based nanocatalysts, and the reaction mechanisms are also revealed. This work demonstrates that the SHINERS-satellites strategy should be a promising method for in situ monitoring of reaction intermediates and elucidating reaction mechanisms.

paper link：：https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15447