As great importance has been attached to the development of thermal catalysis, some determining factors that always affect metal nanocatalysts from being sustainable and active remain to be explored: thermal stability and structural transformation. Therefore, the real-time insights into their feasible working-temperature range and microstructural reconstruction at thermocatalytic conditions will further greatly extend our knowledge of their physicochemical properties and provide valuable guidance for the designs and applications of metal nanocatalysts. With the aids of in-situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the aimed nanocatalysts can be visually revealed for their temperature-dependent effects and microstructural transformation of nanoparticles with high resolution and a wide...[ Read more ]

As great importance has been attached to the development of thermal catalysis, some determining factors that always affect metal nanocatalysts from being sustainable and active remain to be explored: thermal stability and structural transformation. Therefore, the real-time insights into their feasible working-temperature range and microstructural reconstruction at thermocatalytic conditions will further greatly extend our knowledge of their physicochemical properties and provide valuable guidance for the designs and applications of metal nanocatalysts. With the aids of in-situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the aimed nanocatalysts can be visually revealed for their temperature-dependent effects and microstructural transformation of nanoparticles with high resolution and a wide operating temperature range. In this thesis, the in-situ TEM was conducted to investigate some innovative thermocatalytic nanocatalysts: platinum nanoparticles deposited on the pristine graphene oxide (PtNPs/GO), platinum nanoparticles deposited on the water-etched graphene oxide (PtNPs/GO-H₂O), reduced graphene oxide-based platinum nanoparticle (Pt/rGO) and Pd nanoparticles supported on carbon-coated ZnO nanowires (PdNPs/C&ZnO-NWs) under real-time and real-temperature conditions that perfectly recreated the actual thermal catalysis.