The effect of Na
loading on water-gas shift reaction (WGSR) activity
of Ni@TiO
x
-XNa (X = 0, 0.5, 1, 2, and 5 wt %) catalysts has been investigated.
Herein, we report sodium-modified Ni@TiO
x
catalysts (denoted as Ni@TiO
x
-XNa) derived from Ni3Ti1-layered double
hydroxide (Ni3Ti1-LDH) precursor. The optimized
Ni@TiO
x
-1Na catalyst exhibits enhanced
catalytic performance toward WGSR at relatively low temperature and
reaches an equilibrium CO conversion at 300 °C, which is much
superior to those for most of the reported Ni-based catalysts. The
H2-temperature-programmed reduction (H2-TPR)
result demonstrates that the Ni@TiO
x
-1Na
catalyst has a stronger metal–support interaction (MSI) than
the sodium-free Ni@TiO
x
catalyst. The
presence of stronger MSI significantly facilitates the electron transfer
from TiO
x
support to the interfacial Ni
atoms to modulate the electronic structure of Ni atoms (a sharp increase
in Niδ− species), inducing the generation
of more surface sites (Ov–Ti3+) accompanied
by more interfacial sites (Niδ−–Ov–Ti3+), revealed by X-ray photoelectron
spectroscopy (XPS). The Niδ−–Ov–Ti3+ interfacial sites serve as dual-active
sites for WGSR. The increase in the dual-active sites accounts for
improvement in the catalytic performance of WGSR. With the tunable
Ni–TiO
x
interaction, a feasible
strategy in creating active sites by adding low-cost sodium addictive
has been developed.