Distant Oxide Surfaces Dominating Catalytic Reaction Kinetics: The Case of Pt/CeO2

One of the main goals of catalysis research is to improve the reaction efficiency by using platinum-group metals (PGMs) more effectively, given their high cost. PGMs are typically dispersed on oxide supports to maximize their surface area, under the assumption that catalytic activity arises primarily from the PGMs and their immediate oxide surroundings, while oxide surfaces located further away from PGMs are often considered catalytically irrelevant. However, a growing body of research on spillover phenomena suggests that PGMs can influence the catalytic properties of oxide surface sites located several nanometers away from PGMs, prompting the question of whether distant oxide surfaces can play a more active, or even dominant, role in catalytic kinetics. A shift in understanding, from viewing the oxide surface as merely a passive support to recognizing it as an active promoter of the rat…