Cobalt particles dispersed on an oxide support form the basis of many important heterogeneous catalysts. Strong interactions between cobalt and the support may lead to irreducible cobalt oxide formation, which is detrimental for the catalytic performance. Therefore, several strategies have been proposed to enhance cobalt reducibility, such as alloying with Pt or utilization of nonoxide supports. In this work, we fabricate bimetallic PtCo supported on graphene-coated ZnO with enhanced cobalt reducibility. By employing a model/planar catalyst formulation, we show that the surface reduction of cobalt oxide is substantially enhanced by the presence of the graphene support as compared to bare ZnO. Stimulated by these findings, we synthesized a realistic powder catalyst consisting of PtCo particles grafted on graphene-coated ZnO support. We found that the addition of graphene coating enhances the surface reducibility of cobalt, fully supporting the results obtained on the model system. Our study demonstrates that realistic catalysts with designed properties can be developed on the basis of insights gained from model catalytic formulation.
Keywords: Fischer−Tropsch; PtCo alloy; cobalt; composites; graphene.