Construction of stabilized bulk-nano interfaces for highly promoted inverse CeO2/Cu catalyst

Han Yan; Chun Yang; Wei-Peng Shao; Li-Hua Cai; Wei-Wei Wang; Zhao Jin; Chun-Jiang Jia

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-11407-2

Construction of stabilized bulk-nano interfaces for highly promoted inverse CeO₂/Cu catalyst

Nat Commun. 2019 Aug 2;10(1):3470. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-11407-2.

Authors

Han Yan¹, Chun Yang¹, Wei-Peng Shao¹, Li-Hua Cai¹, Wei-Wei Wang¹, Zhao Jin¹, Chun-Jiang Jia²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Colloid and Interface Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Special Aggregated Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shandong University, 250100, Jinan, China.
² Key Laboratory for Colloid and Interface Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Special Aggregated Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shandong University, 250100, Jinan, China. jiacj@sdu.edu.cn.

Abstract

As the water-gas shift (WGS) reaction serves as a crucial industrial process, strategies for developing robust WGS catalysts are highly desiderated. Here we report the construction of stabilized bulk-nano interfaces to fabricate highly efficient copper-ceria catalyst for the WGS reaction. With an in-situ structural transformation, small CeO₂ nanoparticles (2-3 nm) are stabilized on bulk Cu to form abundant CeO₂-Cu interfaces, which maintain well-dispersed under reaction conditions. This inverse CeO₂/Cu catalyst shows excellent WGS performances, of which the activity is 5 times higher than other reported Cu catalysts. Long-term stability is also very solid under harsh conditions. Mechanistic study illustrates that for the inverse CeO₂/Cu catalyst, superb capability of H₂O dissociation and CO oxidation facilitates WGS process via the combination of associative and redox mechanisms. This work paves a way to fabricate robust catalysts by combining the advantages of bulk and nano-sized catalysts. Catalysts with such inverse configurations show great potential in practical WGS applications.