Dr. Hisato Yasumatsu presents Toward practical handling of metal clusters as functional materials

Toward practical handling of metal clusters as functional materials

Hisato Yasumatsu

Advanced Research and Innovation Center, DENSO CORPORATION Nisshin, Aichi 470-0111, Japan;

hisato.yasumatsu.j2d@jp.denso.com

We have discovered that uni-sized Pt clusters can be fixed on an Si substrate as Pt cluster disks through impact of size-selected Pt cluster ions onto the substrate surface:¹ cluster impact.²  In this innovative material, electrons accumulate at the sub-nano interface between the Pt cluster disk and the Si surface,^3,4 enabling catalytic NO reduction5,6 and CO oxidation7-9 at low temperatures through effective bond splitting of NO and O₂, respectively, by electron capture in their antibonding molecular orbitals.

Under practical conditions, silicon carbide (SiC), renowned for its chemical and thermal stability, can substitute Si as a substrate.^5,6  In the present talk, I will provide compelling evidence that the Pt clusters supported on the SiC substrate, prepared in vacuum by the cluster impact onto the SiC surface, maintain their low-temperature catalytic activities in the CO oxidation and the NO reduction under practical conditions as high as 1200 K and atmospheric pressure.¹⁰  The cluster-size dependence and details of the experimental apparatus will also be discussed.

Accumulated electrons hold promise for contributing to key steps of important reactions such as O₂ splitting for the O₂ reduction reaction (ORR) in fuel cells, and H₂O splitting for the H₂ evolution reaction (HER) in artificial photosynthesis.  To utilize the supported clusters as functional materials for catalysis and other applications, such as strong permanent magnets,¹¹ mass synthesis and global analysis are essential.  The final part of the talk will demonstrate laboratory automation for practical manufacturing. 

1.            Yasumatsu, H. et al. J. Chem. Phys, 2005, 123, 124709.

2.            Yasumatsu, H.; Kondow, T. Rep. Prog. Phys, 2003, 66, 1783–1832.

3.            Yasumatsu, H.; Hayakawa, T.; Kondow, T. Chem. Phys. Lett., 2010, 487, 279–284.

4.            Yasumatsu, H.; Murugan, P.; Kawazoe, Y. Phys. Stat. Solidi B, 2012, 6, 1193–1198.

5.            Yasumatsu, H. Invited talk, DPG Spring Meeting, Hannover, Germany, March 5–10, 2023.

6.            Yasumatsu, H. Invited talk, The 11th General Conference of the Asian Consortium on Computational Materials Science, Yokohama, Japan, June 1–3, 2025.

7.            Yasumatsu, H.; Fukui, N. J. Phys. Chem. C, 2015, 119, 11217–11223.

8.            Yasumatsu, H.; Fukui, N. Cat. Sci. Tech., 2016, 6, 6910–6915.

9.            Ahmad, R.; Yasumatsu, H.; Singh, A. K. J. Phys. Chem. C, 2023, 127, 4527–4534.

10.          Yasumatsu, H. et al. JP, 2020-044516, A ‘Cluster-supporting catalyst and method for producing the same’.

11.          Yasumatsu, H.; Kawazoe, Y. ‘High-Performance Magnetic Materials Constructed by Assembly of Spin-Aligned Sub-Nano Clusters’, Handbook of Magnetic Material for Motor Drive Systems, ed. Fujisaki, K. Springer-Nature, 2025.