title: Creation of Controllable High-Density Defects in Silver Nanowires for Enhanced Catalytic Property.
abstract: Structural defects have been proven to determine many of the materials' properties. Here, we demonstrate a unique approach to the creation of Ag nanowires with high-density defects through controllable nanoparticles coalescence in one-dimensional pores of mesoporous silica. The density of defects can be easily adjusted by tuning the annealing temperature during synthetic process. The high-density defects promote the adsorption and activation of more reactants on the surface of Ag nanowires during catalytic reactions. As a result, the as-prepared Ag nanowires exhibit enhanced activities in catalyzing dehydrogenative coupling reaction of silane in terms of apparent activation energy and turnover frequency (TOF). We show further that the silane conversion rate can be enhanced by maximizing the defect density and thus the number of active sites on the Ag nanowires, reaching a remarkable TOF of 8288 h(-1), which represents the highest TOF that has been achieved by far on Ag catalysts. This work not only proves the important role of structural defects in catalysis but also provides a new and general strategy for constructing high-density defects in metal catalysts.
authors.affiliation: Frontier Institute of Science and Technology and School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Center for Advancing Materials Performance from the Nanoscale (CAMP-Nano), State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, China.
authors.forename: Chaoqi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Frontier Institute of Science and Technology and School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Center for Advancing Materials Performance from the Nanoscale (CAMP-Nano), State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, China.
authors.forename: Zhaorui
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education and International Center for Dielectric Research, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, China.
authors.forename: Guang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Frontier Institute of Science and Technology and School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Center for Advancing Materials Performance from the Nanoscale (CAMP-Nano), State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, China.
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of California , Riverside, California 92521, United States.
authors.forename: Yadong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.affiliation: Frontier Institute of Science and Technology and School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Center for Advancing Materials Performance from the Nanoscale (CAMP-Nano), State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, China.
authors.forename: Mingshang
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jin
keywords: Defects; catalysis; nanowire; silane; silver