Partially sintered copper‒ceria as excellent catalyst for the high-temperature reverse water gas shift reaction

Hao-Xin Liu; Shan-Qing Li; Wei-Wei Wang; Wen-Zhu Yu; Wu-Jun Zhang; Chao Ma; Chun-Jiang Jia

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-28476-5

Partially sintered copper‒ceria as excellent catalyst for the high-temperature reverse water gas shift reaction

Nat Commun. 2022 Feb 14;13(1):867. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28476-5.

Authors

Hao-Xin Liu^#¹, Shan-Qing Li^#², Wei-Wei Wang¹, Wen-Zhu Yu¹, Wu-Jun Zhang³, Chao Ma⁴, Chun-Jiang Jia⁵

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Colloid and Interface Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Special Aggregated Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, China.
² Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Powder and Advanced Energy Materials of Anhui Higher Education Institutes, Chizhou University, Chizhou, 247000, China.
³ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China.
⁴ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China. cma@hnu.edu.cn.
⁵ Key Laboratory for Colloid and Interface Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Special Aggregated Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, China. jiacj@sdu.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

For high-temperature catalytic reaction, it is of significant importance and challenge to construct stable active sites in catalysts. Herein, we report the construction of sufficient and stable copper clusters in the copper‒ceria catalyst with high Cu loading (15 wt.%) for the high-temperature reverse water gas shift (RWGS) reaction. Under very harsh working conditions, the ceria nanorods suffered a partial sintering, on which the 2D and 3D copper clusters were formed. This partially sintered catalyst exhibits unmatched activity and excellent durability at high temperature. The interaction between the copper and ceria ensures the copper clusters stably anchored on the surface of ceria. Abundant in situ generated and consumed surface oxygen vacancies form synergistic effect with adjacent copper clusters to promote the reaction process. This work investigates the structure-function relation of the catalyst with sintered and inhomogeneous structure and explores the potential application of the sintered catalyst in C1 chemistry.