Role of benzene tricarboxylic acid in regulating cobalt-titania interface-interaction to access highly dispersed cobalt nanoparticles catalyst

Finding a robust cobalt catalyst with highly exposed metallic, active sites has been challenging but highly desirable. Extending our in-situ hybridization route, herein we prepared a highly dispersed and accessible CoOx#TiO2 catalyst via interface engineering induced by the benzene tricarboxylic acid (BTC). At the optimized content of BTC (molar ratio of BTC/Co=1), the introduced BTC exerted two vital roles in providing active cobalt center, one is retarding the creation of hard-reducible cobalt titanate (CoTiO3) to facilitate the reduction of CoOx species, the other is stabilizing the anatase phase and retaining a relatively high surface area to well-disperse the cobalt nanoparticles. As a result, the selected CoOx#TiO2, affording a large number of accessible metallic cobalt sites, showed an excellent furfuryl alcohol productivity of 31 g(FOL).g(Co)(-1).h(-1) at 140 degrees C and 2.0 MPa, which is among the top values reported by other scientists. Synopsis: The BTC ligands can stabilize the anatase and retard the creation of hard-reducible cobalt titanate (CoTiO3), affording high number of accessible metallic cobalt species. An excellent FOL productivity of 31 gFUR.g(Co)(-).h(-1) at 140 degrees C and 2.0 MPa was achieved.