Abstract
Atomically dispersed supported metal catalysts are drawing wide attention because of the opportunities they offer for new catalytic properties combined with efficient use of the metals. We extend this class of materials to catalysts that incorporate atomically dispersed metal atoms as promoters. The catalysts are used for the challenging nitroarene hydrogenation and found to have both high activity and selectivity. The promoters are single-site Sn on TiO2 supports that incorporate metal nanoparticle catalysts. Represented as M/Sn-TiO2 (M = Au, Ru, Pt, Ni), these catalysts decidedly outperform the unpromoted supported metals, even for hydrogenation of nitroarenes substituted with various reducible groups. The high activity and selectivity of these catalysts result from the creation of oxygen vacancies on the TiO2 surface by single-site Sn, which leads to efficient, selective activation of the nitro group coupled with a reaction involving hydrogen atoms activated on metal nanoparticles.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 10 2018 |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC0211101) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (91645105, 21720102001 and 91634201). The work at University of California was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Basic Energy Sciences, grant number DE-FG02-04ER15513. We acknowledge beamtime at beamline 4-1 at Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource supported by the DOE Division of Materials Sciences, and beamtime at beamline BL14W1 at Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility.