A high-throughput catalyst synthesis system for Ag-based catalysts

Abstract

Ag-based catalysts have been used in many practical reactions, such as p-nitrophenol reduction, due to the advantages of low cost and excellent activity. In order to facilitate the development of Ag-based catalysts, it may be helpful to use automated equipment for experiments. In this study, a system for the high-throughput synthesis of Ag-based catalysts was developed based on a facile impregnation method. Notably, the system automates the batch synthesis of Ag-based catalysts by setting the catalyst formulation in a dedicated software. Moreover, the software used employs the ant colony algorithm to optimize the synthesis path and improve the synthesis efficiency. The catalysts obtained from the high-throughput system are found to be similar to the manually prepared samples based on comparison of characterization results. In addition, experiments also reveal that this high-throughput system is capable of achieving high-throughput synthesis of Ag-based catalysts at the gram level. The synthesis of Pt–Ag bimetallic catalysts shows that this high-throughput system can be effectively used for exploratory experiments. This work paves the way for a high-throughput technique to synthesize Ag-based catalysts in a short period of time, which could be extended to the preparation of other catalyst systems. Moreover, the high-throughput synthesis system of Ag-based catalysts provides a feasible prerequisite for subsequent high-throughput characterization, which is a significant advancement in the development of industrial catalysts.