Highly Dispersed Ni Atoms and O<sub>3</sub> Promote Room-Temperature Catalytic Oxidation
Ruijie Yang, Wanjian Zhang, Yuefeng Zhang, Yingying Fan, Rongshu Zhu, Jian Jiang, Liang Mei, Zhaoyong Ren, Xiao Li He, Jinguang Hu, Zhangxin Chen, Qingye Lu, Jiang Zhou, Haifeng Xiong, Hao Li, Xiao Cheng Zeng, Zhiyuan Zeng
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 2 ) activation. Here, we present a dual-stimulation strategy to tackle these two issues. Specifically, we import highly dispersed nickel (Ni) atoms onto MnO 2 to enrich its oxygen vacancies (reactive sites). Then, we use molecular ozone (O 3 ) with a lower activation energy as an oxidant instead of molecular O 2 . With such dual stimulations, the constructed O 3 –Ni/MnO 2 catalytic system shows boosted room-temperature activity for toluene oxidation with a toluene conversion of up to 98%, compared with the O 3 –MnO 2 (Ni-free) system with only 50% conversion and the inactive O 2 –Ni/MnO 2 (O 3 -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.