Metallic nanoparticles made in flow and their catalytic applications in organic synthesis

Abstract

This paper reviews recent developments on the synthesis of noble metal nanoparticles in micro and milli fluidic devices and their catalytic application in organic flow synthesis. A variety of synthesis methods using microfluidics is presented for gold, silver, palladium, platinum, and copper nanoparticles, including the for mation in singlephase flows and multiphase flows. In the field of organic chemistry, metal nanoparticles can be used as catalysts. This can lead to remarkably improved reaction performance in terms of minimizing the reaction time and higher yields. In this context, various applica tions of those metal nanoparticles as catalysts in micro fluidic devices are highlighted at selected examples. As a new direction and operational window, nanocatalysts may be synthesized in situ in flow and directly utilized in an organic synthesis. This allows making use of highly active, yet instable catalyst species, which may only have a very short life of a few seconds -a type of flashed nano catalyst organic synthesis.

Microfluidics for silica biomaterials synthesis: opportunities and challenges

“…To date, microfluidic techniques have already fully demonstrated their remarkable capacity in the rational design and controllable synthesis of polymer, [22][23][24][25][26] quantum dots, 27,28 and metallic materials. 29,30 For the synthesis of silica materials through microfluidic reactors, although it is still in the preliminary stage, there have already been a range of important developments and breakthroughs by researchers including our group.…”

Microfluidic synthesis and on-chip enrichment application of two-dimensional hollow sandwich-like mesoporous silica nanosheet with water ripple-like surface

“…These include, but are not limited to: 1) greatly reduced mixing time down to the order of microseconds or even less due to the chaotic advection effect; 2) extremely minimized local variations with automated operations and reduced reactor dimensions; 3) large surface-to-volume ratio of microchannels for enhancing mass and heat transfer; 4) sufficient mixing of chemical reactants for achieving high yield of product; 5) rapid reaction kinetics for fast screening of synthesis parameters; 6) confining potentially toxic, corrosive, flammable, or explosive starting materials into a small space for providing great chances to create new particulate structures. [12,13] Meanwhile, the merits of high throughput, low cost, high flexibility, automation capability, and enhanced spatio-temporal control allow microfluidics to serve as a promising platform in diverse application fields, such as biosensing, [10] pharmaceutics, [14] catalysis, [15] tissue engineering, [16] and liquid biopsy. [8] In this study, using a short-range spiral-shaped microfluidic device with two runs, we first created two-dimensional mesoporous silica nanosheet (MSN) and examined its on-chip enrichment performance toward different substrates ( Figure 1).…”

CO2-switchable polymer-hybrid silver nanoparticles and their gas-tunable catalytic activity

“…Compared with AuNPs and other metal nanoparticles (like Pt, Pd), 43,44 silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) can be prepared more readily and inexpensively and also exhibits similar catalytic properties, which may have broad application prospects in catalysis. 45 As such, the appeal for CO 2 -switchable AgNPs with gas-tunable catalytic activity for the general development of smart catalysts remains high.…”