Pt nanoparticles modified by rare earth oxides: Electronic effect and influence to catalytic hydrogenation of 3-phenoxybenzaldehyde

• The rare earths modified Pt/Al2O3 were prepared by colloidal deposition method.
• Modification of Pt by the rare earth enhanced catalytic hydrogenation activity.
• The activity improvement is due to electron interaction between Pt and rare earth.
• The hydrogenation mechanism of rare earth modified Pt catalyst was proposed.

The rare earth elements (La, Ce, Nd, Sm, Pr, and Gd) modified Pt/Al2O3 catalysts were prepared by the colloidal deposition and chemical reduction methods, respectively. Pt nanoparticles with average size 3 ± 0.5 nm were uniformly dispersed on the surface of Al2O3 for the samples prepared by the colloidal deposition method, which exhibited higher activities in the hydrogenation of 3-phenoxybenzadehyde than the corresponding samples prepared by chemical reduction method. Moreover, except Gd, the catalysts modified by rare earth elements showed better catalytic performance than unmodified Pt/Al2O3. For Pt–Ce/Al2O3 catalyst, when the weight percent of Pt and Ce was 0.5 and 0.25, respectively, the hydrogenation conversion of 3-phenoxybenzaldehyde was 97.3% after 6 h reaction. This activity improvement is due to the electronic interaction between Pt and rare earth elements, which was investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

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