On the synergetic catalytic effect in heterogeneous nanocomposite catalysts

The heterogeneous catalytic performance is largely dependent on the catalyst nanostructures or, in another word, processing technologies, in addition to the intrinsic physical and chemical properties of the constitutive components. Compared to the amorphous framework of mesoporous silica, mesoporous metal oxides synthesized by a hard templatereplicating method usually have a crystallized structure and exhibit excellent catalytic activities, as reported in many documents. The loading or dispersion of catalytically active guest species into the host mesopore network results in mesostructured composites of a crystallized framework and highly dispersed catalytic species in its mesopore network. Mesoporous inorganic oxide materials, in the form of either powder or thin film, with high surface areas, ordered pore structures, finely tunable pore sizes, and flexible wallcompositions have been investigated widely of their chemical synthesis and potential applications in catalysis, adsorption, chemical sensing, electrochemistry, biomedical areas, and so on.