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

Journal article, 2022

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 Pt[sbnd]O coordination. During the protracted catalytic extinction, the CO coverage builds up gradually while the Pt oxidation state and Pt[sbnd]O 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.