Mediating trade-off between activity and selectivity in alkynes semi-hydrogenation via a hydrophilic polar layer
Jinqi Xiong1, Shanjun Mao2, Qian Luo1
1Advanced Materials and Catalysis Group, Center of Chemistry for Frontier Technologies, State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization, Institute of Catalysis, Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, P. R. China.
Abstract:
As a crucial industrial process for the production of bulk and fine chemicals, semi-hydrogenation of alkynes faces the trade-off between activity and selectivity due to undesirable over-hydrogenation. By breaking the energy linear scaling relationships, we report an efficient additive-free WO3-based single-atom Pd catalytic system with a vertical size effect of hydrogen spillover. Hydrogen spillover induced hydrophilic polar layer (HPL) with limited thickness on WO3-based support exhibits unconventional size effect to Pd site, in which over-hydrogenation is greatly suppressed on Pd1 site due to the polar repulsive interaction between HPL and nonpolar C=C bonds, whereas this is invalid for Pd nanoparticles with higher altitudes. By further enhancing the HPL through Mo doping, activated Pd1/MoWO3 achieves recorded performance of 98.4% selectivity and 10200 h-1 activity for semi-hydrogenation of 2-methyl-3-butyn-2-ol, 26-fold increase in activity of Lindlar catalyst. This observed vertical size effect of hydrogen spillover offers broad potential in catalytic performance regulation.
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