Electrospun Ce–Mn oxide as an efficient catalyst for soot combustion: Ce–Mn synergy, soot-catalyst contact, and catalytic oxidation mechanism

Abstract

Increasing the contact efficiency and improving the intrinsic activity are two effective strategies to obtain efficient catalysts for soot combustion. Herein, the electrospinning method is used to synthesize fiber-like Ce–Mn oxide with a strong synergistic effect. The slow combustion of PVP in precursors and highly soluble manganese acetate in spinning solution facilitates the formation of fibrous Ce–Mn oxides. The fluid simulation clearly indicates that the slender and uniform fibers provide more interwoven macropores to capture soot particles than the cubes and spheres do. Accordingly, electrospun Ce–Mn oxide exhibits better catalytic activity than reference catalysts, including Ce–Mn oxides by co-precipitation and sol-gel methods. The characterizations suggest that Mn3+ substitution into fluorite-type CeO2 enhances the reducibility through the acceleration of Mn–Ce electron transfer, improves the lattice oxygen mobility by weakening the Ce–O bonds, and induces oxygen vacancies for the activation of O2. The theoretical calculation reveals that the release of lattice oxygen becomes easy because of a low formation energy of oxygen vacancy, while the high reduction potential is beneficial for the activation of O2 on Ce3+-Ov (oxygen vacancies). Due to above Ce–Mn synergy, the CeMnOx-ES shows more active oxygen species and higher oxygen storage capacity than CeO2-ES and MnOx-ES. The theoretical calculation and experimental results suggest that the adsorbed O2 is more active than lattice oxygen and the catalytic oxidation mainly follows the Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism. This study indicates that electrospinning is a novel method to obtain efficient Ce–Mn oxide.