Abstract
Cerium oxide is one of the most important rare earth metal oxides in catalysis, however, the sintering problem of noble metals and CeO2 at higher temperature (e.g., >700 °C) is still unresolved. Herein, Pt nanoparticles self-assembled on ultra-thin CeO2 nanowires (NWs) and then confined inside a thermally robust porous silica shell (Pt-CeO2NW@SiO2) were introduced. The thickness of CeO2 NWs was just ˜2.0 nm. Moreover, Pt-CeO2 NW@SiO2 showed significantly enhanced catalytic performances for total oxidation of CO and toluene. The increased catalytic properties are attributed to the strong metal-support interaction effect between Pt and CeO2 NWs at sub-nanoscale. Most importantly, the special core-shell structure also affords excellent sintering resistance retention up to 700 °C for 100 h, due to the guarding effect of porous silica shell. Finally, the formation mechanism of Pt-CeO2 NW@SiO2 was investigated in detail. Current strategy should inspire many rational designs of rare-earth metal-based nanocatalysts for real-world catalysts.
