Congratulations to Petru for his Nature Materials paper!

One of the biggest challenges for a more sustainable society is to have active and stable catalysts which enable the transition from fossil to renewable feedstocks, reduce energy consumption, and minimize the environmental footprint. Herein, we synthesize novel hybrid materials where an amorphous oxide coating with embedded organic ligands surrounds metallic nanocrystals. We demonstrate that the hybrid coating is a powerful mean to create electrocatalysts stable against structural reconstruction during the CO₂ electroreduction. These electrocatalysts consists of copper nanocrystals encapsulated in a hybrid organic/inorganic alumina shell grown by our colloidal atomic layer deposition method. The synthetic tunability of the chemistry developed herein opens new avenues for the design of stable electrocatalysts and beyond. Read more here!