• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.245-245
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• 2012

Syntheses of oxide supported metal catalysts by wet-chemical routes have been well known for their use in heterogeneous catalysis. However, uniform deposition of metal nanoparticles with controlled size and shape on the support with high reproducibility is still a challenge for catalyst preparation. Among various synthesis methods, arc plasma deposition (APD) of metal nanoparticles or thin films on oxide supports has received great interest recently, due to its high reproducibility and large-scale production, and used for their application in catalysis. In this work, Au and Pt nanoparticles with size of 1-2 nm have been deposited on titania powder by APD. The size of metal nanoparticles was controlled by number of shots of metal deposition and APD conditions. These catalytic materials were characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD), inductively coupled plasma (ICP-AES), CO-chemisorption and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Catalytic activity of the materials was measured by CO oxidation using oxygen, as a model reaction, in a micro-flow reactor at atmospheric pressure. We found that Au/$TiO_2$ is reactive, showing 100% conversion at $110^{\circ}C$, while Pt/$TiO_2$ shows 100% conversion at $200^{\circ}C$. High activity of metal nanoparticles suggests that APD can be used for large scale synthesis of active nanocatalysts. We will discuss the effect of the structure and metal-oxide interactions of the catalysts on catalytic activity.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.493-498
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• 2011

Optimal atomic configurations in a nanoparticle were predicted by genetic algorithm. A truncated octahedron with a fixed composition of 1 : 1 was investigated as a model system. A Python code for genetic algorithm linked with a molecular dynamics method was developed. Various operators were implemented to accelerate the optimization of atomic configuration for a given composition and a given morphology of a nanoparticle. The combination of random mix as a crossover operator and total_inversion as a mutation operator showed the most stable structure within the shortest calculation time. Pt-Ag core-shell structure was predicted as the most stable structure for a nanoparticle of approximately 4 nm in diameter. The calculation results in this study led to successful prediction of the atomic configuration of nanoparticle, the size of which is comparable to that of practical nanoparticls for the application to the nanocatalyst.