Abstract
Temporal Analysis of Products (TAP) reactor system is used to investigate CO oxidation behavior on Au/SiO2 catalysts prepared via the physical vapor deposition method magnetron sputtering. Au/SiO2 catalysts are a valuable model system for studying the reactivity of Au nanoparticles, since the SiO2 support plays little role in the reaction. The adsorption of CO on the catalyst was studied under TAP vacuum conditions and at different temperatures. The heat of CO adsorption estimated from TAP results by moment analysis is -23.9 kJ/mol which is high compared to heat of CO adsorption reported by other TAP groups studying Au/TiO2 catalysts [29]. The reaction over the catalyst pretreated with oxygen under different pretreatment pressures (vacuum pressures to 33.66 psia) was studied under TAP vacuum conditions via CO titration. It was found that the amount of oxygen available on the surface for CO oxidation is proportional to the pretreatment pressure.
