Pt₁ enhanced C-H activation synergistic with Pt_n catalysis for glycerol cascade oxidation to glyceric acid

The selective oxidation of glycerol to glyceric acid, an important value-added reaction from polyols, is a typical cascade catalytic process. It is still of great challenge to simultaneously achieve high glycerol activity and glyceric acid selectivity, suffering from either deep oxidation and C-C cleavage or poor oxidation efficiency from glyceraldehyde to glyceric acid. Herein, this work, inspired by nature, proposes a cascade synergistic catalysis strategy by atomic and low-coordinated cluster Pt on well-defined Cu-CuZrO_x, which involves enhanced C-H activation on atomic Pt₁ and O-H activation on cluster Pt_n in the oxidation of glycerol to glyceraldehyde, and cluster Pt_n for C=O activation followed by O-H insertion and atomic Pt₁ for C-H activation in the tandem oxidation of glyceraldehyde to glyceric acid. The enhanced C-H activation in the cascade process by atomic Pt₁ is revealed to be essential for the high glycerol activity (90.0±0.1%) and the glyceric acid selectivity (80.2±0.2%).