Publication date: 22nd July 2026
Metal exsolution from oxide hosts is a powerful route to generate socketed, stable, and regenerable catalytic nanoparticles. Yet, exsolution is often treated mainly as a thermal reduction process, while its practical control depends on a broader set of coupled factors: the amount of metal that effectively emerges from the host lattice, the pathways available for cation migration, the nucleation landscape at the surface, and the ability of the parent oxide to withstand repeated redox operation.
In this talk, I will discuss exsolution as an architecture-dependent redox transformation in functional oxides. We demonstrate that vertically aligned perovskite-fluorite heterostructures can guide Ni migration through dense arrays of vertical interphases, promoting surface nanoparticle formation while preserving the structural integrity of the oxide scaffold after reduction. We also show that small fractions of exsolved Ni can be quantified by exploiting the magnetic contrast between ferromagnetic metallic nanoparticles and a paramagnetic oxide matrix, providing a sensitive whole-sample route to evaluate exsolution beyond the limits of conventional X-ray diffraction.
This architectural control is not limited to catalyst formation. Related redox-stable vertical heterostructures also act as functional electrochemical interfaces, where the nanoscale coexistence of mixed-conducting perovskite and ion-conducting fluorite phases increases reaction-site density and supports operation in both oxidizing and reducing atmospheres. These results suggest that oxide exsolution should be understood not only in terms of composition and temperature, but also in terms of interface density, strain, cation mobility, and oxygen chemical potential. I will conclude by briefly discussing ongoing efforts to extend these concepts toward electrochemically driven exsolution, where applied bias may offer an additional handle for forming, regenerating, and possibly reversing catalytic states during operation.
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