Herein we present a novel and facile approach to controllably load ultrafine noble metal nanoparticles on titania through in situ redox reaction between the reductive titanium(III) oxide support and metal salt precursors in aqueous solution. A series of noble metal/TiO(2) nanocomposites with uniform metal dispersion, tunable metal particle size, and narrow metal particle size distribution were obtained.

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Ce(III) oxide was synthesized under the protection of nitrogen gas, which had strong ability to reduce noble metal ions (e.g., Au, Pd ions) into metallic forms under oxygen-free conditions. On the basis of the surface redox reaction between the Ce(III) oxide support and noble metal ions, an effective and novel approach was presented to prepare noble metal/CeO(2) nanocatalysts, and a series of AuPd/CeO(2) nanocomposites with different Au:Pd molar ratios and metal loadings were obtained in the absence of any extra reducing and protective agents. The resultant composites were characterized by different techniques including X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microspectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron microspectroscopy, and ICP-AES analysis. It was demonstrated that in the AuPd/CeO(2) composites the content of Ce(III) reached about 30%, and the AuPd bimetallic particles with average size of 2.6 or 3.3 nm and narrow size distribution were uniformly distributed on the CeO(2) nanorods. The AuPd/CeO(2) composites were found to be excellent heterogeneous nanocatalysts for the selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol under solvent-free conditions. It was shown that all the AuPd/CeO(2) catalysts exhibited good selectivity toward benzaldehyde; especially, the catalyst with Au:Pd = 1:5 and metal loading of 1.2 wt % displayed extremely high activity with a TOF = 30.1 s(-1) at 160 °C.

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