Industry has long used reactive metal clusters stuck to larger, inert particles as chemical catalysts. Today, developers of catalysts are making those clusters as small as possible to maximize exposed metal and thus speed up reactions.
New experiments reveal a surprise: With small clusters, the distinction between the active metal and the presumably inert carrier begins to blur, says Bruce C. Gates of the University of California, Davis.
That's noteworthy because as the carrier becomes a player in the reactions, it can alter the relative amounts of byproducts coming from intermediate steps in the reactions, Gates and his colleagues report in the Feb. 7…
