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Nanocluster catalyst lives longer Chinese chemists report a rhodium nanocluster catalyst that demonstrates "unprecedented" lifetime and activity in benzene hydrogenation under forcing conditions (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2005, 127, 9694). The rhodium nanoclusters, which tend to coalesce into bulk metal on their own, are stabilized by the novel combination of a pyrrolidone-substituted, ionic-liquidlike copolymer (shown) dissolved in an imidazolium ionic liquid. The total turnovers for the catalyst--a measure of catalytic lifetime--exceeded 20,000 over five runs, which is more than five times the previous record for benzene hydrogenation by a nanocluster catalyst. Yuan Kou and coworkers at Peking University suggest that the high stability and activity of the rhodium catalyst are due to the combined stabilizing influences of the ionic liquid and the pyrrolidone-substituted copolymer. The stabilized rhodium nanoclusters, each roughly 3 nm across, were synthesized by hydrogenation of a mixture of RhCl3·3H2O and the copolymer dissolved in the ionic liquid. |
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