Controlled Formation of Metal@Al₂O₃ Yolk-Shell Nanostructures with Improved Thermal Stability.

Yolk-shell structured nanomaterials have shown interesting potential in different areas due to their unique structural configurations. A successful construction of such a hybrid structure relies not only on the preparation of the core materials, but also on the capability to manipulate the outside wall. Typically, for Al2O3, it has been a tough issue in preparing it into a uniform nanoshell, making the use of Al2O3-based yolk-shell structures a challenging but long-awaited task. Here, in benefit of our success in the controlled formation of Al2O3 nanoshell, we demonstrated that yolk-shell structures with metal confined inside a hollow Al2O3 nanosphere could be successfully achieved. Different metals including Au, Pt, Pd have been demonstrated, forming a typical core@void@shell structure. We showed that the key parameters of the yolk-shell structure such as the shell thickness and the cavity size could be readily tuned. Due to the protection of a surrounding Al2O3 shell, the thermal stability of the interior metal nanoparticles could be substantially improved, resulting in promising performance for the catalytic CO oxidation as revealed by our preliminary test on Au@Al2O3.