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Updated: Oct 22, 2026

Hydrogen Production and Utilization in a Membrane Reactor
Published on: March 10, 2023
Unidirectional Hydrogen Migration Through Interfacial Engineering for Promoted Brønsted Acid Catalysis
Shuangfeng Xing1,2, Shudong Liang1,3, Shaocheng Zhang1,3
1State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Taiyuan, China.
Abstract:
Though playing a critical role, the controllable and directional migration of reactive species in chemical reactions is still hard to achieve. Here, we propose an interfacial engineering strategy for constructing a hydrogen spillover nanodiode that channels hydrogen unidirectionally. Such a nanodiode design is materialized in a composite WOx/TiO2/Pt catalyst with spatially separated structure, where WOx and Pt particles are dispersed on the outer and inner surfaces of porous TiO2 nanotubes, respectively. This nanodevice permits forward H migration (Pt→TiO2→WOx) while suppresses the reverse path (WOx→TiO2), as directly evidenced by in situ x-ray absorption fine structure characterization under hydrogenation and H2 generation reactions. This rectification behavior originates from the diode characteristics of the TiO2-WOx heterojunction, which hinders both proton and electron transfer from WOx to TiO2. Consequently, WOx/TiO2/Pt accumulates highly concentrated Brønsted acid sites in H2 atmosphere and thus exhibits superior catalytic performance compared to the closely contacted WOx-Pt/TiO2 catalyst. Up to 5.3 times higher liquid alkane yield has been achieved over WOx/TiO2/Pt relative to WOx-Pt/TiO2 in the polyethylene hydrocracking reaction. This nanodiode design strategy is general and can be extended to other catalysts/species, offering mechanistic insight and boosting catalytic performance in diverse reactions.
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