Nano-supported metal oxide catalysts: A new class of catalytic materials

The ever-constant pursuit of improving activity, selectivity, and deactivation resistance of heterogeneous catalysts is facilitated through the design and development of new catalyst structures. Supported metal oxide materials play a tremendous rote in catalytic processes in bulk chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, and environmental applications. Re-designing supported metal oxide catalysts through the use of nanoparticles as the support material leads to the unexpected generation of highly polymerized metal oxo surface species. These easily reducible polymerized species can be exploited for reactions in which a reduction step is required to form an active catalyst, such as acid-catalyzed dehydration (by nano-WO _x/ZrO ₂) and oxidative dehydrogenation (by nano-VO _x/ZrO ₂). The bottom-up synthesis, molecular and bulk structural characterization, and catalytic properties of these novel nano-supported metal oxide materials are presented. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 227th ACS National Meeting (Anaheim, CA 3/28/2004-4/1/2004).