Research progress of metal catalysts enhanced synthesized by cold plasma

Abstract

Cold plasma is a kind of non-thermal plasma, and characterized by high electron temperature (1-10 eV) and low gas temperature, which can be close to room temperature. It has been proved to be a fast, facile and environmentally friendly new method for synthesizing supported metal catalysts. Enhanced synthesis of metal catalysts by cold plasma consists of complex physical and chemical reactions. On the one hand, the active environment provided by cold plasma, can not only speed up the chemical reactions, shorten the reaction time from a few hours to several minutes, but also realize the kinetically or thermodynamically infeasible chemical reactions to achieve unconventional preparation. On the other hand, the phase contact behavior on a mesoscopic scale is influenced during cold plasma enhanced preparation, thereby the metal catalysts with structure different from that synthesized by traditional method. This review summarizes the reactor structure, physical and chemical mechanism for synthesizing metal catalysts by cold plasma, as well as the structure characteristics of the obtained metal catalysts. According to the working pressure, cold plasma can be categorized into low-pressure (LP) cold plasma and atmospheric-pressure (AP) cold plasma. The LP cold plasma is often generated by radio frequency glow discharge or direct current glow discharge, while the AP cold plasma is generally generated by dielectric barrier discharge and AP cold plasma jet. Energetic electrons are deemed to be the reducing agents for LP cold plasma. However, due to the frequent collisions among the electrons and gas molecules at atmospheric pressure, the electron energy in AP cold plasma is not high enough to reduce the metal ions directly. Therefore, hydrogen-containing gases are often adopted to generate active hydrogen species to reduce the metal ions. The process of synthesizing the metal catalysts by using the cold plasma is a fast, low-temperature process, and in the preparation process there exists a strong Coulomb repulsion. Therefore, metal catalysts with small size and high dispersion of metal nanoparticles, strong metal-support interaction, as well as specific metal structures (alloying degree and crystallinity) and modified supports can be obtained. Correspondingly, metal catalysts with high catalytic activity and stability can be synthesized. In addition, the challenges of preparing the cold plasma are discussed, and the future development is also prospected.