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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