Study of Single Catalytic Events at Copper-in-Charcoal: Localization of Click Activity Through Subdiffraction Observation of Single Catalytic Events

Abstract

Single molecule fluorescence microscopy reveals that copper-in-charcoal--a high performance click catalyst- has remarkably few catalytic sites, with 90% of the charcoal particles being inactive, and for the catalytic ones the active sites represent a minute fraction (∼0.003%) of the surface. The intermittent nature of the catalytic events enables subdiffraction resolution and mapping of the catalytic sites.