Interface Tailoring of Heterogeneous Catalysts by Atomic Layer Deposition

The tailoring of the metal-oxide interface is an important strategy in the design and development of novel catalysts with superior catalytic performance. However, the structure and location of the metal-oxide interface on supported catalysts cannot be well controlled by traditional methods, and the structure-property relation is not clearly understood in most reactions. Therefore, it is highly desirable to develop new methods to precisely tailor the metal-oxide interface and thus achieve highly efficient catalysts and a fundamental understanding of the principle of interface catalysis. Atomic layer deposition (ALD), a high-level film-growth technology, is a promising and controllable approach to precisely design and tailor the metal-oxide interface on an atomic scale. In this Review, we present and discuss a series of recently developed ALD strategies for tailoring the metal-oxide interface of heterogeneous catalysts, such as overcoating, ultrathin modification, area-selective ALD, template-assisted ALD, and template- and sacrificial-layer-assisted ALD. These methods have been used to develop many catalysts with different structures, such as core-shell structures, inverse oxide/metal structures, oxide-nanotrapped metal structures, porous sandwich structures, multiply confined metal nanoparticles in oxide nanotubes, and multifunctional catalysts with multiple metal-oxide interfaces. Due to its advantages, ALD can be applied to reveal the catalytic mechanism of metal-oxide interfaces by deliberately designing catalysts with a clear structure, even in confined and synergetic environments. In general, the developed ALD approaches provide us with a toolkit for tailoring the metal-oxide interface and designing heterogeneous catalysts.