ABSTRACT
A variety of industrial catalytic processes employ small metal-particle catalysts on porous inorganic supports. The particle sizes are increasingly in the nanometre size range which gives rise to nanocatalysts. As described in chapter 1, commonly used supports are ceramic oxides, like alumina and silica, or carbon. Metal (or metallic) catalysts in catalytic technologies contain a high dispersion of nanoscopic metal particles on ceramic oxide or carbon supports. This is to maximize the surface area with a minimum amount of metal for catalytic reactions. It is desirable to have all of the metal exposed to reactants.
