Active and stable Pt-Ceria nanowires@silica shell catalyst: Design, formation mechanism and total oxidation of CO and toluene

Abstract

Cerium oxide is one of the most important rare earth metal oxides in catalysis, however, the sintering problem of noble metals and CeO2 at higher temperature (e.g., >700 °C) is still unresolved. Herein, Pt nanoparticles self-assembled on ultra-thin CeO2 nanowires (NWs) and then confined inside a thermally robust porous silica shell (Pt-CeO2NW@SiO2) were introduced. The thickness of CeO2 NWs was just ˜2.0 nm. Moreover, Pt-CeO2 NW@SiO2 showed significantly enhanced catalytic performances for total oxidation of CO and toluene. The increased catalytic properties are attributed to the strong metal-support interaction effect between Pt and CeO2 NWs at sub-nanoscale. Most importantly, the special core-shell structure also affords excellent sintering resistance retention up to 700 °C for 100 h, due to the guarding effect of porous silica shell. Finally, the formation mechanism of Pt-CeO2 NW@SiO2 was investigated in detail. Current strategy should inspire many rational designs of rare-earth metal-based nanocatalysts for real-world catalysts.