Boosting the catalytic performance of Pt/TiO2 catalysts in room-temperature formaldehyde elimination by incorporating CeO2 promoters

To tackle the health threats caused by formaldehyde (HCHO) contamination, great efforts have been made to create high-performance and cost-efficiency catalysts that can completely remove HCHO at room temperature. Herein, we demonstrate an interface engineering strategy to improve the catalytic performance of Pt/TiO2 by introducing CeO2 promoters. When evaluated as catalysts in HCHO elimination reaction, the obtained 0.2Pt/5Ce-TiO2 catalysts possess remarkable catalytic activity and stability, which can completely convert 100 ppm HCHO into CO2 and H2O under a gas hourly space velocity of 120,000 mL gcat−1 h−1 at room temperature, and retain nearly 100% HCHO conversion after 28-h continuous test. Further structure-performance investigations reveal the crucial role of CeO2 that can significantly increase the contents of surface oxygen vacancies and Pt0 species, thereby the key intermediates including dioxymethylene, formate, and carbonate species can be easily converted. More importantly, the 0.2Pt/5Ce-TiO2 is readily sprayed onto the meltblown fabrics to construct an available face mask for protecting people against HCHO pollution, which can instantly remove 2.6 ∼ 4.0 ppm HCHO at room temperature, indicating the great potential in practical applications.