Reactive metal–support interactions at moderate temperature in two-dimensional niobium-carbide-supported platinum catalysts

The reactive metal–support interaction (RMSI) offers electronic, geometric and compositional effects that can be used to tune catalytic active sites. Generally, supports other than oxides are disregarded as candidates for RMSI. Here, we report an example of non-oxide-based RMSI between platinum and Nb2CT x MXene—a recently developed, two-dimensional metal carbide. The surface functional groups of the two-dimensional carbide can be reduced, and a Pt–Nb surface alloy is formed at a moderate temperature (350 °C). Such an alloy exhibits weaker CO adsorption than monometallic platinum. Water-gas shift reaction kinetics reveals that the RMSI stabilizes the nanoparticles and creates alloy–MXene interfaces with higher H2O activation ability compared with a non-reducible support or a bulk niobium carbide. This RMSI between platinum and the niobium MXene support can be extended to other members of the MXene family and opens new avenues for the facile design and manipulation of functional bimetallic catalysts. Reactive metal–support interactions can tune the activity of heterogeneous catalysts, but have mainly been reported for oxide supports. Now, the metal–support interaction of platinum with MXenes at moderate temperature is reported, using the water-gas shift reaction as an example to showcase the properties of a representative catalyst.