Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Pt catalyst particles on reducible oxide supports often change their activity significantly at elevated temperatures due to the strong metal–support interaction (SMSI), which induces the formation of an encapsulation layer around the noble metal particles. However, the impact of oxidizing and reducing treatments at elevated pressures on this encapsulation layer remains controversial, partly due to the “pressure gap” between surface science studies and applied catalysis. In the present work, we employ synchrotron-based near-ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (NAP-XPS) to study the effect of O2 and H2 on the SMSI-state of well-defined Pt/TiO2(110) catalysts at pressures of up to 0.1 Torr. By tuning the O2 pressure, we can either selectively oxidize the TiO2 support or both the support and the Pt particles. Catalyzed by metallic Pt, the encapsulating oxide overlayer grows rapidly in 1 × 10–5 Torr O2, but orders of magnitude less effectively at higher O2 pressures, where Pt is in an oxidic state. While the oxidation/reduction of Pt particles is reversible, they remain embedded in the support once encapsulation has occurred.