Characterization of the active site for the selective oxidation of methanol to formaldehyde on polycrystalline silver catalyst

Abstract

Using in situ FTIR spectroscopy to compare the interaction of methyl formate and formic acid with a polycrystalline silver catalyst shows that methyl fromate is dissociatively chemisorbed on conventional silver faces such as (111) and (110) which contained nucleophilic adsorbed oxygen species while in contrast, formic acid is adsorbed not only on (111) and (110) silver planes but also on silver sites modified by the presence of subsurface oxygen; this behaviour supports a previously proposed model of the active site for the selective oxidation of methanol to formaldehyde on silver catalyst.