Au-Pd nanoparticles immobilized on TiO nanosheet as an active and durable catalyst for solvent-free selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol.

TiOnanocrystals with controlled facets have been extensively investigated due to their excellent photocatalytic performance in sustainable and green energy field. However, the applications in thermal catalysis without applying UV irradiation are comparably less and the identification of their intrinsic roles, especially the different catalytic behaviors of each crystal facet, remains not fully recognized. In this study, bimetallic AuPd nanoparticles supported on anatase TiO nanosheets exposing {001} facets or TiO nanospindles exposing {101} as a catalyst were prepared by sol-immobilization method and used for solvent-free benzyl alcohol oxidation. The experimental results indicated that the exposed facet of the support has a significant effect on the catalytic performance. AuPd/TiO-001 catalyst exhibited a higher benzyl alcohol conversion than that of the AuPd/TiO-101. Meanwhile, all the prepared AuPd/TiO catalysts were characterized by XRD, ICP-AES, XPS, BET, TEM, and HRTEM. The results revealed that the higher number of oxygen vacancies in TiO-sheets with the exposed {001} facets of higher surface energy could be responsible for the observed enhancement in the catalytic performance of benzyl alcohol oxidation. The present study displays that it is plausible to enhance the catalytic performance for the benzyl alcohol oxidation by tailoring the exposed facet of the TiO as a catalyst support.