Spontaneous deposition of boron oxide on rhodium nanostructure for selective conversion of syngas to ethanol

Selectively blocking the specific sites on catalyst nanostructure for undesired side reactions are important, but challengeable. Herein, we showed that the boron oxide species could spontaneously and selectively reacted with the low-coordination sites on Rh nanoparticles, which are active for undesired methanation in conversion of syngas to ethanol. As a result, the boron oxide modified RhMn nanoparticles on silica support (RhMnB_3.9/SiO₂) exhibited oxygenate selectivity as high as 63.9% by suppressing the methane selectivity to 31.1%, where 90.1% of the oxygenates are C₂-oxygenates. Such an oxygenate selectivity outperforms the supported RhMn catalysts that usually gave selectivity higher than 50% to undesired methane. This work offers an alternative route for ethanol production from syngas.