Abstract
Catalytic conversion of toxic nitrogen oxide (NO) and carbon monoxide (CO) into nitrogen (N2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) is imperative under the weight of the increasingly stringent emission regulations, while a fundamental understanding of the nature of the active site to selectively drive N2 generation is elusive. Herein, in combination with state-of-the-art mass-spectrometric experiments and quantum-chemical calculations, we demonstrated that the rhodium-cerium oxide clusters RhCe2O3-5- can catalytically drive NO reduction by CO and give rise to N2 and CO2. This finding represents a sharp improvement in cluster science where N2O is commonly produced in the rarely established examples of catalytic NO reduction mediated with gas-phase clusters. We demonstrated the importance of the unique chemical environment in the RhCe2O3- cluster to guide the substantially improved N2 selectivity: a triatomic Lewis "acid-base-acid" Ceδ+-Rhδ--Ceδ+ site is proposed to strongly adsorb two NO molecules as well as the N2O intermediate that is attached on the Rh atom and can facilely dissociate to form N2 assisted by both Ce atoms.
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