Efficient Catalytic Production of Hydrogen Peroxide Using Tin-containing Zeolite Fixed Palladium Nanoparticles with Oxidation Resistance.

Abstract

The metal surfaces tend to be oxidized in air through dissociation the O-O bond of oxygen to reduce the performances in various fields. Although several ligand modification routes have alleviated the oxidation of bulky metal surfaces, it is still a challenge for the oxidation resistance of small-size metal nanoparticles. Herein, we fixed the small-size Pd nanoparticles in tin-contained MFI zeolite crystals, where the tin acts as an electron donor to efficiently hinder the oxidation of Pd by weakening the adsorption of molecular oxygen and suppressing the O-O cleavage. This oxidation-resistant Pd catalyst exhibited superior performance in directly synthesizing hydrogen peroxide from hydrogen and oxygen, with the productivity of hydrogen peroxide at ~10,170 mmol gPd-1 h-1, steadily outperforming the catalysts tested previously. This work leads to the hypothesis that tin is an electron donor to realize oxidation-resistant Pd within zeolite crystals for efficient catalysis to overcome the limitation of generally supported Pd catalysts, and further motivates the use of oxidation-resistant metal nanoparticles in various fields.