Reactive Metal–Support Interactions Promote the Low-Temperature Water Gas Shift Activity of Ni-Based Catalysts

Tuning the strong metal–support interaction has emerged as an effective strategy for modifying the electronic and geometric properties of interfacial active sites, offering great potential for enhancing the performance of heterogeneous catalysts. Herein, we present a catalytic system based on the reactive metal–support interaction effect, which significantly enhances the Ni-based catalytic activity for the low-temperature water gas shift reaction. The thin zinc oxide overlayer on the surface of nickel nanoparticles is formed by reducing fully mixed zinc and nickel hydroxides. This zinc oxide overlayer can then be further reduced to metallic zinc, which is uniformly embedded in the nickel lattice to form a NiZn alloy. The segregated Ni sites, coupled with abundant interfacial oxygen vacancies, facilitate the activation of H2O and the direct release of H2. Meanwhile, the linearly adsorbed CO on isolated Ni sites easily reacts with oxygen species to form CO2 while suppressing methane formation. The resulting optimal catalyst achieves a rate of 53.4 μmolCO gcat–1 s–1 at 250 °C, higher than the Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 commercial catalyst (14.6 μmolCO gcat–1 s–1) and outperforming many reported noble metal-based catalysts.