Fabricating Robust Pt Clusters on Sn‐Doped CeO2 for CO Oxidation: A Deep Insight into Support Engineering and Surface Structural Evolution

Abstract The size effect on nanoparticles, which affects the catalysis performance in a significant way, is crucial. The tuning of oxygen vacancies on metal‐oxide support can help reduce the size of the particles in active clusters of Pt, thus improving catalysis performance of the supported catalyst. Herein, Ce−Sn solid solutions (CSO) with abundant oxygen vacancies have been synthesized. Activated by simple CO reduction after loading Pt species, the catalytic CO oxidation performance of Pt/CSO was significantly better than that of Pt/CeO2. The reasons for the elevated activity were further explored regarding ionic Pt single sites being transformed into active Pt clusters after CO reduction. Due to more exposed oxygen vacancies, much smaller Pt clusters were created on CSO (ca. 1.2 nm) than on CeO2 (ca. 1.8 nm). Consequently, more exposed active Pt clusters significantly improved the ability to activate oxygen and directly translated to the higher catalytic oxidation performance of activated Pt/CSO catalysts in vehicle emission control applications.