In-situ formed stable Pt nanoclusters on ceria-zirconia solid solutions induced by hydrothermal aging for efficient low-temperature CO oxidation.

[Display omitted] Pt nanoclusters (Pt C) on the surface of ceria-zirconia solid solutions exhibit superior low-temperature CO oxidation activity compared to Pt single atoms (Pt 1). However, the redispersion behavior of the Pt C to Pt 1 lowers the efficiency of CO Oxidation. In this work, the stable surface hydroxyl groups were constructed by high-temperature hydrothermal aging treatment. Specifically, the Pt 1 catalyst (Pt/CZOe-SA) prepared by atom trapping was subjected to high-temperature hydrothermal treatment to obtain the stable Pt C catalyst (Pt/CZOe-HT) with in-situ formed Pt C. The experimental results showed that Pt C with 2–3 nm size could achieve excellent low-temperature activity and thermal stability. In addition, the ab initio molecular dynamics and density functional theory calculations revealed the specific evolution process of dynamic dispersion for Pt C with or without hydroxyl groups from the femtosecond scale, suggesting that the hydroxyl groups limited the dispersion of Pt C in the form of "energy fence". The hydrothermal treatment not only introduced high-temperature stable hydroxyl groups to improve the stability of the in-situ formed Pt C , but also optimized the ratio of Pt 1 and Pt C , and then enhanced the low-temperature activity by the synergistic effect between Pt 1 and Pt C. The present work can provide theoretical guidance for developing high-performance and high-stability Pt-based catalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]