Chemical Reduction of Titania Supported Gold by Glycerol

Gold was loaded on TiO2 by deposition precipitation method (DPU). The as prepared DPU samples were reduced in the liquid phase through chemical reduction with pure glycerol. The advantage of this method is that, the formation of small particles (less than 7 nm) can be prevented. The chemically reduced 0.93% Au/TiO2 sample exhibited an average gold size of 12.6  0.92 nm while, the H2-reduced counterpart showed 4.2  0.25 nm. The efficacy of the size-controlled catalyst was demonstrated in the selective oxidation of HMF. The chemically reduced samples exhibited excellent selective oxidation performance by forming exclusively one product. This study reveals the possibility of controlling the size of metal-oxide supported gold catalysts.