Facilitating the dry reforming of methane with interfacial synergistic catalysis in an Ir@CeO 2-x catalyst.

The dry reforming of methane provides an attractive route to convert greenhouse gases (CH4 and CO2 ) into valuable syngas, so as to resolve the carbon cycle and environmental issues. However, the development of high-performance catalysts remains a huge challenge. Herein, we report a 0.6% Ir/CeO2-x catalyst with a metal-support interface structure which exhibits high CH4 (~72%) and CO2 (~82%) conversion and a CH4 reaction rate of ~973 μmolCH4 gcat -1 s-1 which is stable over 100 h at 700 °C. The performance of the catalyst is close to the state-of-the-art in this area of research. A combination of in situ spectroscopic characterization and theoretical calculations highlight the importance of the interfacial structure as an intrinsic active center to facilitate the CH4 dissociation (the rate-determining step) and the CH2 * oxidation to CH2 O* without coke formation, which accounts for the long-term stability. The catalyst in this work has a potential application prospect in the field of high-value utilization of carbon resources.