An On‐Demand, Selective Hydrogenation Catalysis over Pt−Fe Nanocatalysts under Ambient Condition

Abstract The selective hydrogenation of organic compounds with multiple unsaturated bonds is of significant for fine chemicals, while simultaneously achieving high selectivities of different potential products is still great challenge. Herein, we have successfully designed a nanocatalysis system, which can serve as a control switch of selective α, β‐unsaturated aldehydes hydrogenation towards potential products in a highly on‐demand fashion. We demonstrate that the PtFe nanospheres (NSs) represent excellent selectivity (>92.8 %) to unsaturated alcohols with high conversion (>99.7 %), due to the higher electron density of the active Pt atoms. When introducing AlCl 3 , the selectivity of saturated aldehydes enhances to 97.1 % at 95.8 % conversion, owing to synergy between PtFe NSs and AlCl 3 . Finally, the PtFe−A NSs generated by etching away the Fe can promote the selectivity saturated alcohols (>99.7 %) with the highest activity, on account of more exposed active sites after the chemical etching. Significantly, the developed nanocatalysis system can also exhibit high activity/selectivity for other typical α, β‐unsaturated aldehydes as well as excellent stability after consecutive reactions. This work provides a guideline for the rational design highly active and selective Pt‐based nanocatalyst.