Gold Catalysis

Abstract

Catalysis by gold has rapidly become a hot topic in chemistry, with a new discovery being made almost every week. Gold is equally effective as a heterogeneous or a homogeneous catalyst and in this Review we attempt to marry these two facets to demonstrate this new found and general efficacy of gold. The latest discoveries are placed within a historical context, but the main thrust is to highlight the new catalytic possibilities that gold-catalyzed reactions currently offer the synthetic chemist, in particular in redox reactions and nucleophilic additions to pi systems. Indeed gold has proved to be an effective catalyst for many reactions for which a catalyst had not been previously identified, and many new discoveries are still expected.

One‐Step Pyrolysis Preparation of 1.1.1 Oriented Gold Nanoplatelets Supported on Graphene and Six Orders of Magnitude Enhancement of the Resulting Catalytic Activity

“…Supported Au NPs exhibit a remarkable catalytic activity for a series of reactions including selective oxidations, reductions and couplings. [2,30,31] To evaluate the influence of preferential 1.1.1 facet orientation and the strong metal-support interaction on the catalytic performance, the activity of Au ̅̅̅̅ /fl-G film (quartz plates, 3.2 ng×cm -2 ) was compared with that of an analogous Au/fl-G sample in which Au NPs obtained by the polyol method have been deposited on fl-G at 0.1 wt % Au content. In the literature it is well known that polyol reduction renders Au NPs of about 5 nm average size.…”

Characterization of gold nanoparticle films: Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy with image analysis, and atomic force microscopy

“…Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have numerous applications, especially in green nanotechnology, 1,2 and can be used for catalysis 3 and in plasmonically enhanced devices such as photovoltaic cells, 4,5 light emitting diodes, 6 photocatalytic reactors, 7,8 and gas sensors. 9,10 Thin films comprised of AuNPs have a geometric thickness d g -between the substrate and the tops of the nanoparticles-that clearly is larger than the mass thickness d m for a hypothetical, uniform layer containing the same number of atoms.…”

Acetic acid production by selective oxidation of ethanol using Au catalysts supported on various metal oxide

“…Bioethanol could be one of the examples of biomass that can be used in future as a feedstock in this context. Since the pioneering discovery by Haruta and his co-workers that gold nanoparticles can catalyze CO oxidation effectively at low temperatures [4] there has been a tremendous interest in gold-catalyzed oxidation reactions [5,6]. In particular, the oxidation of alcohols has received significant attention, and rightfully so since the reaction satisfies most of the demands for a modern, sustainable, and ''green'' reaction [7].…”

“…Recently, it has been found that Au supported catalysts are selective and stable for the oxidation of various alcohols to their corresponding aldehydes, acids and ketones [27][28][29]. In this emerging field of "green" oxidation chemistry, catalysts comprising gold nanoparticles have attained a very prominent role [30].…”