Nanostructured, Single Site Titanium-Silicate Catalysts with Varying Support Connectivities – Correlating Site Structure with Activity in the Oxidation of Trimethylphenol to Benzoquinone

摘要

The goals of preparing nanostructured materials are in many ways synonymous with long- standing efforts in catalysis science to prepare well defined, single site catalysts on the surfaces of support materials.[1] One picture of an ideal, single site, supported catalyst has a dense array of isolated, identical sites on a high surface area support material similar to nanopatterning. Traditional methods of binding metals to supports involving adsorption of catalyst precursors onto preexisting surfaces or sol-gel approaches to mixed metal oxides all face well known challenges in the context of preparing true single site catalysts.[2] For these reasons, many well-known catalysts used in industry are still not well characterized in the sense of having a precise and accurate picture of what the active site(s) that are responsible for their catalytic behavior.