The paper published by Professor Chu Haibin's team in the prestigious international journal. [Photo/imu.edu.cn]

Professor Chu Haibin's team from the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of Inner Mongolia University (IMU) published important findings in a top international chemicals journal, IMU officials said on April 1.

They said the paper from IMU, in North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, was published in an academic paper in ACS Catalysis – the respected and leading international journal in chemistry.

What’s more, the officials said it’s the first time that IMU has published an academic paper in the prestigious journal.

The study mentioned in the paper -- which was entitled Overcoming the Deactivation of Pt/CNT by Introducing CeO2 for Selective Base-free Glycerol-to-Glyceric Acid Oxidation -- successfully solved the deactivation problem of platinum catalysts in the oxidation of glycerol by introducing rare earth ceria and clearly revealed the catalytic mechanism of ceria for the first time.

In addition, Professor Chu’s team recently made a series of important research results in the field of rare earth catalysis and biomass conversion.

In 2018, his team innovatively proposed that the surface hydroxyl group is of great significance to the electrocatalytic performance of ceria. It successfully synthesized hydrated ceria nano material rich in the hydroxyl group on the surface, which experts said can greatly improve the electrocatalytic activity and stability of platinum for alcohol oxidation.

Relevant work has attracted widespread attention since the publication of Journal of Materials Chemistry A (June 2318-2326, 2018). At present, the article has been cited 20 times.

At the beginning of 2020, the team also reported in the Journal of Catalysis (2020, 381, 434-442), a well-known publication in the field of catalysis, on the use of the intrinsic crystal surface effect of platinum nanocrystals, to improve the catalytic activity and stability of platinum in the oxidation of glycerol.