Surface Faceting and Reconstruction of Ceria Nanoparticles

The surface atomic arrangement of metal oxides determines their physical and chemical properties, and the ability to control and optimize structural parameters is of crucial importance for many applications, in particular in heterogeneous catalysis and photocatalysis. Whereas the structures of macroscopic single crystals can be determined with established methods, for nanoparticles (NPs), this is a challenging task. Herein, we describe the use of CO as a probe molecule to determine the structure of the surfaces exposed by rod-shaped ceria NPs. After calibrating the CO stretching frequencies using results obtained for different ceria single-crystal surfaces, we found that the rod-shaped NPs actually restructure and expose 111 nanofacets. This finding has important consequences for understanding the controversial surface chemistry of these catalytically highly active ceria NPs and paves the way for the predictive, rational design of catalytic materials at the nanoscale.