Recent Applications of Amorphous Alloys to Design Skeletal Catalysts

Amorphous alloys are still attracting great attention in the field of catalysis despite the fact that they have been investigated since the 1950s. One of the reasons why amorphous alloys have been in the spotlight until now, are their physical and chemical properties, which would make them suitable materials to be used as catalysts at industrial scale. This review deals with the recent research on applications of amorphous alloys for catalysis. These investigations were addressed to elucidate the relationship between the structural changes (morphology, surface-exposed metal sites, etc.) and the catalytic activity for representative reactions such as hydrogenations, oxidations and hydrogen production from hydrogen carrier molecules. Furthermore, the impact of the combination of an amorphous alloy with another kind of material (MOF and CeO2) and the introduction of a third metal was also discussed.