Surfactant-Free Synthesis of Ultrafine Pt Nanoparticles on MoS2 Nanosheets as Bifunctional Catalysts for the Hydrodeoxygenation of Bio-Oil

Hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of bio-oil is a crucial step for improving the bio-fuel quality, but developing highly dispersed Pt-based catalysts with high selectivity for target alkanes remains a great challenge. This study presents a fast surfactant-free method to prepare the MoS2-supported Pt catalyst for HDO. Ultrafine Pt nanoparticles with sizes of <5 nm can be readily grown on chemically exfoliated MoS2 nanosheets (NSs) via the direct microwave-assisted thermal reduction. The obtained Pt NPs/MoS2 composites show excellent catalytic performance in the conversion of palmitic acid, and the best selectivity (also the yield) of hexadecane and pentadecane is 80.56 and 19.43%, respectively.