A Sinter-Resistant Catalytic System Based on Platinum Nanoparticles Supported on TiO2 Nanofibers and Covered by Porous Silica†
This work was supported by the Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc. Part of the research was performed at the Nano Research Facility (NRF), a member of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN) that is funded by the National Science Foundation under award no. ECS-0335765. As a visiting graduate student from Southeast University, Y.D. was also partially supported by the National Basic Research Program (973 program, 2007CB936300), the Innovation Program for Graduate Students in Jiangsu Province (CX08B-051Z), and the China Scholarship Council. We thank Prof. Jimmy Liu at the University of Missouri (St. Louis) for helping us with the sintering experiments under hydrogen gas.
Graphical Abstract
Holey support: The generation of a porous coating of SiO2 on Pt-decorated TiO2 nanofibers enables the preparation of a sinter-resistant catalytic system (see picture). The Pt nanoparticles could resist sintering at temperatures up to 750 °C in air, as the SiO2 coating acts as a physical barrier that slows down surface migration, but the system remained catalytically active because of the porous nature of the coating.
