Silver and Copper Dual Single Atoms Boosting Direct Oxidation of Methane to Methanol via Synergistic Catalysis

Abstract

Abstract Rationally constructing atom‐precise active sites is highly important to promote their catalytic performance but still challenging. Herein, this work designs and constructs ZSM‐5 supported Cu and Ag dual single atoms as a proof‐of‐concept catalyst (Ag1−Cu1/ZSM‐5 hetero‐SAC (single‐atom catalyst)) to boost direct oxidation of methane (DOM) by H2O2. The Ag1−Cu1/ZSM‐5 hetero‐SAC synthesized via a modified co‐adsorption strategy yields a methanol productivity of 20,115 µmol gcat−1 with 81% selectivity at 70 °C within 30 min, which surpasses most of the state‐of‐the‐art noble metal catalysts. The characterization results prove that the synergistic interaction between silver and copper facilitates the formation of highly reactive surface hydroxyl species to activate the C−H bond as well as the activity, selectivity, and stability of DOM compared with SACs, which is the key to the enhanced catalytic performance. This work believes the atomic‐level design strategy on dual‐single‐atom active sites should pave the way to designing advanced catalysts for methane conversion.

Keywords

• dual‐atom centers
• methane direct conversion
• methanol
• selective conversion
• synergistic catalysis