Control of Thickness and Chemical Properties of Atomic Layer Deposition Overcoats for Stabilizing Cu/γ‐Al2O3 Catalysts. Issue 12 (25th September 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: O'Neill, Brandon J.; Sener, Canan; Jackson, David H. K.; Kuech, Thomas F.; Dumesic, James A.
• Is Part Of: ChemSusChem. Volume 7:Issue 12(2014:Dec.)
• Page Start: 3247
• Page End: 3251
• Publication Date: 2014-09-25
• Subjects: Green chemistry -- Periodicals; Sustainable engineering -- Periodicals; Chemistry -- Periodicals; Chemical engineering -- Periodicals; 660
• DOI: 10.1002/cssc.201402832
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1864-5631

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" xml:lang="en"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>Whereas sintering and leaching of copper nanoparticles during liquid‐phase catalytic processing can be prevented by using atomic layer deposition (ALD) to overcoat the nanoparticles with AlO_{<italic>x</italic>}, this acidic overcoat leads to reversible deactivation of the catalyst by resinification and blocking of the pores within the overcoat during hydrogenation of furfural. We demonstrate that decreasing the overcoat thickness from 45 to 5 ALD cycles is an effective method to increase the rate per gram of catalyst and to decrease the rate of deactivation for catalysts pretreated at 673 K, and a fully regenerable copper catalyst can be produced with only five ALD cycles of AlO_{<italic>x</italic>}. Moreover, although an overcoat of MgO_{<italic>x</italic>} does not lead to stabilization of copper nanoparticles against sintering and leaching during liquid‐phase hydrogenation reactions, the AlO_{<italic>x</italic>} overcoat can be chemically modified to decrease acidity and deactivation through the addition of MgO_{<italic>x</italic>}, while maintaining stability of the copper nanoparticles.</p> </abstract>