Metal catalysts are generally supported on hard inorganic materials because of their high thermochemical stabilities. Here, we support Pd catalysts on a thermochemically stable but “soft” engineering plastic, polyphenylene sulfide (PPS), for acetylene partial hydrogenation. Near the glass transition temperature (~353 K), the mobile PPS chains cover the entire surface of Pd particles via strong metal-polymer interactions. The Pd-PPS interface enables H₂ activation only in the presence of acetylene that has a strong binding affinity to Pd and thus can disturb the Pd-PPS interface. Once acetylene is hydrogenated to weakly binding ethylene, re-adsorption of PPS on the Pd surface repels ethylene before it is further hydrogenated to ethane. The Pd-PPS interaction enables selective partial hydrogenation of acetylene to ethylene even in an ethylene-rich stream and suppresses catalyst deactivation due to coke formation. The results manifest the unique possibility of harnessing dynamic metal-polymer interaction for designing chemoselective and long-lived catalysts.

金属催化剂由于其高热化学稳定性而通常负载在硬质无机材料上。在这里，我们将钯催化剂负载在热化学稳定但“软”的工程塑料聚苯硫醚（PPS）上，用于乙炔部分氢化。在玻璃化转变温度（~353 K）附近，移动的 PPS 链通过强金属-聚合物相互作用覆盖 Pd 颗粒的整个表面。 Pd-PPS界面仅在存在乙炔的情况下才能够激活H ₂ ，乙炔对Pd具有很强的结合亲和力，因此可以干扰Pd-PPS界面。一旦乙炔被氢化成弱结合乙烯，PPS 在 Pd 表面上的重新吸附就会排斥乙烯，然后再进一步氢化成乙烷。即使在富含乙烯的物流中，Pd-PPS 相互作用也能够将乙炔选择性部分加氢为乙烯，并抑制由于焦炭形成而导致的催化剂失活。结果表明，利用动态金属-聚合物相互作用来设计化学选择性和长寿命催化剂的独特可能性。