Highly Dispersed Ni Atoms and O<sub>3</sub> Promote Room-Temperature Catalytic Oxidation.

Yang, Ruijie; Zhang, Wanjian; Zhang, Yuefeng; Fan, Yingying; Zhu, Rongshu; Jiang, Jian; Mei, Liang; Ren, Zhaoyong et al. · ACS Nano · 2024

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Transition metal oxides are promising catalysts for catalytic oxidation reactions but are hampered by low room-temperature activities. Such low activities are normally caused by sparse reactive sites and insufficient capacity for molecular oxygen (O<sub>2</sub>) activation. Here, we present a dual-stimulation strategy to tackle these two issues. Specifically, we import highly dispersed nickel (Ni) atoms onto MnO<sub>2</sub> to enrich its oxygen vacancies (reactive sites). Then, we use molecular ozone (O<sub>3</sub>) with a lower activation energy as an oxidant instead of molecular O<sub>2</sub>. With such dual stimulations, the constructed O<sub>3</sub>-Ni/MnO<sub>2</sub> catalytic system shows boosted room-temperature activity for toluene oxidation with a toluene conversion of up to 98%, compared with the O<sub>3</sub>-MnO<sub>2</sub> (Ni-free) system with only 50% conversion and the inactive O<sub>2</sub>-Ni/MnO<sub>2</sub> (O<sub>3</sub>-free) system. This leap realizes efficient room-temperature catalytic oxidation of transition metal oxides, which is constantly pursued but has always been difficult to truly achieve.