Oxidation of benzyl alcohol using supported gold–palladium nanoparticles

A key discovery in the last two decades has been the realisation that gold, when prepared as supported nanoparticles, is exceptionally effective as an oxidation catalyst, particularly for the oxidation of alcohols. The catalytic efficacy is enhanced further by the alloying of gold with palladium. In this paper we study the effect of the method preparation of gold–palladium alloy nanoparticles supported on titania and investigate the activity of the materials for the selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol. We contrast impregnation and deposition–precipitation methods and demonstrate that the most active catalysts are prepared using the deposition–precipitation method.