CHAPTER 3: New Strategies to Fabricate Nanostructured Colloidal and Supported Metal Nanoparticles and their Efficient Catalytic Applications

Nanometre-sized transition metal particles have attracted much attention as potentially advanced catalysts because their exceptional properties lie between those of single metal atoms and bulks. Achieving accurate control of particle size and overall particle size distribution is one of the most vital challenges and offers unique chemical and physical properties. Herein, recent progress in the exploitation of promising nanoparticle (NP)-based catalysts is described. The catalysts were designed by a precise architecture that enables efficient and selective chemical transformations and they can be completely separated and are recyclable. This chapter consists of the following three topics: (i) a new route for the preparation of supported metal NPs catalysts, (ii) multifunctional catalysts based on magnetic NPs, (iii) core-shell nanostructured catalysts for one-pot reactions. The synthetic strategies described here are simple and general for practical catalyst design, thus allowing a strong protocol for creating various nanostructured catalysts.