Recent Advances in the Marriage of Catalyst Nanoparticles and Mesoporous Supports

Abstract The marriage of catalyst nanoparticles and mesoporous supports brings exciting new opportunities in the field of catalysis, which provides the ability to create advanced nanoporous catalysts for a wide range of catalytic processes. It has been found that not only the features of mesoporous supports, such as, surface areas, mesostructures, and pore sizes, are critical for the catalytic performances, but also the unique properties of catalyst nanoparticles, including dispersion, particle size, and loading amount, play critical roles in determining catalytic performance. Those aspects have been discussed partly in previous reviews, but a comprehensive overview on the basic design principles and synthetic methods for the marriage of catalyst nanoparticles and mesoporous supports is still lacking. In this review, the recent progresses in the fabrication of advanced catalysts by incorporation of catalyst nanoparticles into mesoporous supports are summarized. First, the synthetic strategies for the controllable synthesis are reviewed. At the same time, the corresponding chemical‐/physically properties of the resultant supported mesoporous catalysts are highlighted. After that, the catalytic performances of the resultant mesoporous catalysts in the thermal catalysis, photocatalysis, and electrocatalysis are discussed. Moreover, the research challenges and perspectives in this field are assessed.