Silica sub-microtubes loaded with platinum nanoparticles have been prepared in flexible non-woven mats using co-axial electrosppining technique. A partially gelated sol made from tetraethyl orthosilicate was used as the silica precursor, and oil was used as the sacrificial template for the hollow channel generation. Platinum has been supported on the wall of the tubes just adding the metallic precursor to the sol-gel, thus obtaining the supported catalyst by one-pot method. The silica tubes have a high aspect ratio with external/internal diameters of 400/200 nm and well-dispersed platinum nanoparticles of around 2 nm. This catalyst showed a high NO conversion with very high selectivity to N 2 at mild conditions in the presence of excess oxygen when using C 3 H 6 as reducing agent. This relevant result reveals the potential of this technique to produce nanostructured catalysts onto easy to handle conformations.Keywords: coaxial electrospinning, silica nanotubes, platinum nanoparticles, NOx SCR.
Graphical AbstractHighlights Non-woven mats of platinum-loaded silica nanotubes were obtained by co-axial electrospinning in one-pot procedure. By this technique, high dispersed Pt nanoparticles can be easily deposited on the walls of the silica nanotubes. Pt-loaded silica nanotube non-woven mats show high activity for low temperature NOx SCR with propylene in the presence of excess oxygen and outstanding N 2 selectivity, at the studied operation conditions.