Control of metal-support interaction for tunable CO hydrogenation performance over Ru/TiO2 nanocatalysts

Heyun Lin; Wenzhe Zhang; Huachen Shen; Hailing Yu; Yunlei An; Tiejun Lin; Liangshu Zhong

doi:10.1039/d3nr06208b

Control of metal-support interaction for tunable CO hydrogenation performance over Ru/TiO₂ nanocatalysts

Nanoscale. 2024 Mar 21;16(12):6151-6162. doi: 10.1039/d3nr06208b.

Authors

Heyun Lin^{1

2

3}, Wenzhe Zhang³, Huachen Shen^{1

2}, Hailing Yu^{1

2}, Yunlei An¹, Tiejun Lin^{1

2}, Liangshu Zhong^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Low-Carbon Conversion Science and Engineering, Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201210, China. lintj@sari.ac.cn.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P. R. China.
³ School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, 201210, China.

PMID: 38445306
DOI: 10.1039/d3nr06208b

Abstract

The catalytic behavior of CO hydrogenation can be modulated by metal-support interactions, while the role of the support remains elusive. Herein, we demonstrate that the presence of strong metal-support interactions (SMSI) depends strongly on the crystal phase of TiO₂ (rutile or anatase) and the treatment conditions for the TiO₂ support, which could critically control the activity and selectivity of Ru-based nanocatalysts for CO hydrogenation. High CO conversion and olefin selectivity were observed for Ru/rutile-TiO₂ (Ru/r-TiO₂), while catalysts supported by anatase (a-TiO₂) showed almost no activity. Characterization confirmed that the SMSI effect could be neglected for Ru/r-TiO₂, while it is dominant on Ru/a-TiO₂ after reduction at 300 °C, resulting in the coverage of Ru nanoparticles by TiO_x overlayers. Such SMSI could be suppressed by H₂ treatment of the a-TiO₂ support and the catalytic activity of the as-obtained Ru/a-TiO₂(H₂) can be greatly elevated from almost inactive to >50% CO conversion with >60% olefin selectivity. Further results indicated that the surface reducibility of the TiO₂ support determines the SMSI state and catalytic performance of Ru/TiO₂ in the CO hydrogenation reaction. This work offers an effective strategy to design efficient catalysts for the FTO reaction by regulating the crystal phase of the support.