Carbon-supported palladium catalysts find a wide variety of applications in the fine chemicals, fuel cell, and exhaust emission industries. A nagging discrepancy is prevalent in the literature dealing with such catalysts: while XRD and STEM estimates of metal nanoparticle size usually agree, chemisorption uptake is often 3 or 4 times less than expected. This occurs even when chloride-free precursors are used; there must be an adsorption inhibiting/site blocking mechanism beyond chloride poisoning. We hypothesize this mechanism to be carbon decoration.<br/><br/>In this work the roles of residual chloride and carbon decoration, the latter of which is detected by careful temperature programmed oxidation experiments, have been isolated. A synthesis and chemisorption methodology is demonstrated which removes both effects and provides uptake results consistent with XRD and STEM measurements.

Rectifying the chemisorption-XRD particle size discrepancy: The roles of residual chloride and carbon decoration

251st National Meeting (2016)

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