Galvanic replacement reaction: recent developments for engineering metal nanostructures towards catalytic applications

. This is one of the most characteristic galvanic replacement reactions, and it can be tuned to create a huge variety of nanoparticle morphologies. We will discuss how advanced electron microscopy characterization enables us to uncover surface-segregation behavior as a function of compositions, and relate this to the detected catalytic performance. We will also discuss how galvanic replacement can be extended to trimetallic compositions, leading to improvements in catalytic activities compared to mono or bimetallic counterparts. Furthermore, we will show how surface morphology, size, and anisotropic growth can be controlled by tuning the temperature during the synthesis and by combining galvanic replacement reaction with co-reduction. Finally, we will demonstrate how these approaches are promising for large-scale synthesis of controlled hollow nanostructures and their incorporation into supports to produce catalysts at the gram-scale. We believe the developments described herein shed important insights and may inspire the development of sophisticated and controlled nanomaterials at relatively larger scales for catalytic applications.