Engineering Noble Metal Nanomaterials for Pollutant Decomposition

With the development of the chemical industry, more pollutants are produced in the environment, some of which are difficult to degrade by traditional biological treatment methods. Catalysis can directly degrade pollutants into products with less impact on the environment. In the past two decades, due to their unique physical and chemical properties, noble metal nanomaterials (NMNs) have been widely used as highly efficient catalysts in environmental catalysis for water and air pollutant treatment. The properties of NMNs are highly dependent on their parameters, including size, composition, and support, which can be readily used to improve the efficiency of NMNs-based catalysts. In this review, we discuss the effects of size, composition, and support on the catalytic performance of NMNs based on different environmental catalytic methods and characteristic pollutants in water and air. In addition, we focus on the mechanism of environmental catalysis and the relationship between catalytic performance and the properties of the catalysts and the chemical nature of the pollutants. We hope that this review will provide guidance for the design of NMNs-based catalysts for pollutant decomposition.