Tackling CO Poisoning with Single Atom Alloy Catalysts

Journal Article · Sun May 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Journal of the American Chemical Society

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.6b03339· OSTI ID:1390815

Liu, Jilei; Lucci, Felicia R.; Yang, Ming; Lee, Sungsik; Marcinkowski, Matthew D.; Therrien, Andrew J.; Williams, Christopher T.; Sykes, E. Charles H.; Flytzani-Stephanopoulos, Maria

Platinum (Pt) catalysts are extensively used in the chemical industry and as electrocatalysts in fuel cells. Pt is notorious for its sensitivity to poisoning by strong CO adsorption. Here we demonstrate that the single atom alloy (SAA) strat-egy applied to Pt reduces the binding strength of CO while maintaining catalytic performance. By using surface sensi-tive studies, we accurately determined the binding strength of CO to different Pt ensembles, and this in turn guided the preparation of PtCu alloy nanoparticles. The atomic ratio Pt:Cu = 1:120 yielded a SAA which exhibited excellent CO tolerance in H2 activation, the key elementary step for hy-drogenation and hydrogen electro-oxidation. As a probe reaction, the selective hydrogenation of acetylene to ethene was performed under flow conditions on the SAA nanopar-ticles supported on alumina without activity loss in the pres-ence of CO. The ability to maintain reactivity in the presence of CO is vital to other industrial reactions including fuel reforming and methanol/ethanol fuel cells.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science - Office of Basic Energy Sciences - Scientific User Facilities Division
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-06CH11357
• OSTI ID: 1390815
• Journal Information: Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 138; ISSN 0002-7863
• Publisher: American Chemical Society (ACS)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English