Same size, same support, same spectator? Selective acetylene hydrogenation on supported Pd nanoparticles

The selective hydrogenation of acetylene catalyzed by Pd nanoparticles is industrially used to increase the purity of ethylene. Despite the implementation of Pd based catalysts on an industrial scale, little is known about metal-support interactions on a fundamental level due to the complexity of these systems. In this study, the influence of metal-support interactions between Pd nanoparticles and two electronically modified a-SiO₂ thin films on acetylene hydrogenation is investigated under ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions. The hydrogenation is performed under isothermal reaction conditions using a pulsed molecular beam reactive scattering (pMBRS) technique. Besides the activity and selectivity of clean Pd particles also the impact of dehydrogenated species intentionally introduced a priori is elucidated, whereas the active phase of the catalyst is additionally characterized by CO infrared reflection-absorption spectroscopy (IRRAS) and post-mortem temperature-programmed reaction (TPR). Metal-support interactions are found to influence the catalytic properties of Pd particles by charge-transfer, where positive charging leads to increased activity for acetylene hydrogenation. However, the increased activity is accompanied by formation of undesired byproducts. The active sites for acetylene and ethylene hydrogenation are shown to be different as previously proposed by the A and E model. The availability of the two different active sites on the Pd nanoparticles is determined by dehydrogenated species, whose nature and stability can be tuned by metal-support interactions. Based on these findings an electronic model is proposed how selectivity for acetylene hydrogenation can be steered solely by metal-support interactions leading to blocking of unselective sites in situ.