The effects of the support materials (c-Al 2 O 3 , SiO 2 , ZrO 2 ) on the catalytic performance in n-pentane isomerization have been investigated for Pt-H 3 PW 12 O 40 (Pt-TPA) metal-acid bifunctional catalysts. Significant impact of supports on the catalyst activity has been found and the activity sequence corresponding to different supports was ZrO 2 [ [SiO 2 [ [c-Al 2 O 3 . Several characterization methods of XRD, FT-IR, NH 3 -TPD, TPR and BET were used to explore the nature of the supported catalysts. Simultaneously, the influence of a series of pretreatment conditions of pH, calcination temperature and calcination time for self-prepared ZrO 2 on the catalytic performance related to the supported Pt-TPA catalysts was studied.