Improved Catalytic Activity and Chemical Stability of Defective TiO<sub>2</sub> Catalysts by Doping Rare Earth Metal Sc for Propane Dehydrogenation
Qing-He Shang, Jingnan Liu, Wan‐Zhong Lang, Xi Yan, Xiao-Jing Guo, Ya‐Jun Guo
Abstract
Herein, scandium (Sc)-doped TiO2 (nSc/TiOx) catalysts were synthesized to investigate the impact of the doped rare earth metal Sc on its catalytic performance. It is found that appropriate Sc addition can facilitate the formation of oxygen vacancies (OVs) and active sites for the propane dehydrogenation (PDH) reaction, and the catalytic performance is evidently enhanced. However, excessive Sc clusters occur on the surface of the sample in the form of metal oxides as the amount of doped Sc increases, resulting in the decline of catalytic performance. The catalytic activity for the PDH reaction is closely related to the acidity of the Lewis acidic sites in nSc/TiOx catalysts. The introduction of Sc ions indeed enhances the lattice stability of the catalyst due to the formation of Ti–O–Sc bonds.