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

• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14039
• Publication Date: 2017-01-18T11:20:29Z
• Authors: Guofeng Zhao; Fan Yang; Zongjia Chen; Qingfei Liu; Yongjun Ji; Yi Zhang; Zhiqiang Niu; Junjie Mao; Xinhe Bao; Peijun Hu; Yadong Li
• Keywords: /dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1600/1600; name=General Chemistry; /dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1300/1300; Science; Q; 540; 01 natural sciences; /dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3100/3100; name=General Physics and Astronomy; Article; 0104 chemical sciences; name=General Physics and Astronomy; name=General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology; /dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1300/1300; name=General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology; /dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3100/3100; name=General Chemistry; /dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1600/1600

AbstractA 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 Cu2O/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.