Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Theoretical Study of Water Adsorption on Fe3O4 and of Water-Gas Shift Reaction on Au/Fe3O4

摘要

Gold supported on metal oxide materials has recently been reported to catalyze the water gas shift reaction: CO + H2O OOOH2 + CO2. This observation is quite surprising since gold is normally thought of as a largely inert metal. Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that this catalytic activity remains robust even when all of the particulate gold of >1.5 nm size is removed from the oxide support, thereby indicating that the catalytically active gold represents only a small fraction of the total number of gold atoms present on the surface.