Engineering Heterogenous Catalysts for Chemical CO2 Utilization: Lessons from Thermal Catalysis and Advantages of Yolk@shell Structured Nanoreactors

The development of catalytic materials for the recycling CO2 through a myriad of available processes is an attractive field, especially given the current climate change. While there is increasing publication in this field, the reported catalysts rarely deviate from the traditionally supported metal nanoparticle morphol-ogy, with the most simplistic method of enhancement being the addition of more metals to an already complex composition. Encapsulated catalysts, especially yolk@shell catalysts with hollow voids, offer answers to the most prominent issues faced by this field, coking and sintering, and further potential for more advanced phenomena, for example, the confinement effect, to promote selectivity or offer greater protection against coking and sintering. This work serves to demonstrate the current position of catalyst development in the fields of thermal CO2 reforming and hydrogenation, summarizing the most recent work available and most common metals used for these reactions, and how yolk@shell catalysts can offer superior performance and survivability in thermal CO2 reforming and hydrogenation to the more traditional structure. Furthermore, this work will briefly demonstrate the bespoke nature and highly variable yolk@shell structure. Moreover, this review aims to illuminate the spatial confinement effect and how it enhances yolk@shell structured nanoreactors is presented. (C) 2020 Science Press and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. and Science Press. All rights reserved.