Pt<sub>1</sub> enhanced C-H activation synergistic with Pt<sub>n</sub> catalysis for glycerol cascade oxidation to glyceric acid.

An, Zhe; Zhang, Zilong; Huang, Zeyu; Han, Hongbo; Song, Binbin; Zhang, Jian; Ping, Qi; Zhu, Yanru et al. · Nat Commun · 2022

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

The selective oxidation of glycerol to glyceric acid, an important value-added reaction from polyols, is a typical cascade catalytic process. It is still of great challenge to simultaneously achieve high glycerol activity and glyceric acid selectivity, suffering from either deep oxidation and C-C cleavage or poor oxidation efficiency from glyceraldehyde to glyceric acid. Herein, this work, inspired by nature, proposes a cascade synergistic catalysis strategy by atomic and low-coordinated cluster Pt on well-defined Cu-CuZrO<sub>x</sub>, which involves enhanced C-H activation on atomic Pt<sub>1</sub> and O-H activation on cluster Pt<sub>n</sub> in the oxidation of glycerol to glyceraldehyde, and cluster Pt<sub>n</sub> for C=O activation followed by O-H insertion and atomic Pt<sub>1</sub> for C-H activation in the tandem oxidation of glyceraldehyde to glyceric acid. The enhanced C-H activation in the cascade process by atomic Pt<sub>1</sub> is revealed to be essential for the high glycerol activity (90.0±0.1%) and the glyceric acid selectivity (80.2±0.2%).

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