Metal/oxide interfacial effects on the selective oxidation of primary alcohols

A main obstacle in the rational development of heterogeneous catalysts is the difficulty in identifying active sites. Here we show metal/oxide interfacial sites are highly active for the oxidation of benzyl alcohol and other industrially important primary alcohols on a range of metals and oxides com...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2017-01, Vol.8 (1), p.14039-14039, Article 14039
Main Authors: Zhao, Guofeng, Yang, Fan, Chen, Zongjia, Liu, Qingfei, Ji, Yongjun, Zhang, Yi, Niu, Zhiqiang, Mao, Junjie, Bao, Xinhe, Hu, Peijun, Li, Yadong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
119/118
140/146
639/638/77/885
639/638/77/887
Alcohol
Catalysis
Chemistry
Humanities and Social Sciences
Interfaces
Investigations
Microscopy
multidisciplinary
Nanocomposites
Oxidation
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:A main obstacle in the rational development of heterogeneous catalysts is the difficulty in identifying active sites. Here we show metal/oxide interfacial sites are highly active for the oxidation of benzyl alcohol and other industrially important primary alcohols on a range of metals and oxides combinations. Scanning tunnelling microscopy together with density functional theory calculations on FeO/Pt(111) reveals that benzyl alcohol enriches preferentially at the oxygen-terminated FeO/Pt(111) interface and undergoes readily O–H and C–H dissociations with the aid of interfacial oxygen, which is also validated in the model study of Cu 2 O/Ag(111). We demonstrate that the interfacial effects are independent of metal or oxide sizes and the way by which the interfaces were constructed. It inspires us to inversely support nano-oxides on micro-metals to make the structure more stable against sintering while the number of active sites is not sacrificed. The catalyst lifetime, by taking the inverse design, is thereby significantly prolonged. Metals supported on metal oxides are common heterogeneous catalysts. Here the authors show that metal/oxide interfacial sites are highly active for alcohol oxidation—independent of the particle sizes—and use this information to design inverse oxide-on-metal particles with high activity and stability.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms14039