Chasing PtO species in ceria supported platinum during CO oxidation extinction with correlative operando spectroscopic techniques

Abstract

Industrially relevant, highly dispersed, Pt/ceria and reference Pt/alumina catalysts with narrow Pt particle size distributions have been prepared, characterised ex situ and studied for CO oxidation by operando infrared and X-ray absorption spectroscopy. At high CO conversions, spectator CO ad-species on ionic platinum are observed while the CO oxidation proceeds on Pt particles in a high oxidation state exhibiting significant PtO coordination. During the protracted catalytic extinction, the CO coverage builds up gradually while the Pt oxidation state and PtO coordination remain high because of interactions with ceria. The observed CO oxidation at high CO coverage is suggested to involve sites at the platinum-ceria boundary that cannot be CO self-poisoned. This behaviour is in stark contrast to that of Pt/alumina, which shows removal of platinum oxides formed during CO oxidation and the classical drop in catalytic activity caused by rapid CO self-poisoning when reaching a critical temperature.