Manipulation of Electronic Effect and Assembly Architecture to Invoke Oxidation of Ethylbenzene by Hierarchical Co₃O₄ Wreaths

A high-performance transition-metal oxide catalyst can be designed by appropriately integrating the concepts of morphology regulation and electronic structure modulation. In this work, hierarchical Co₃O₄ wreaths (CCW) enriched with oxygen vacancies (Ov) were facilely constructed for the selective oxidation of ethylbenzene (EB) to acetophenone (AP). Under the screened optimal reaction conditions, the CCW catalyst can offer a 79.1% conversion of EB (r_i = 0.244 mol g_cat^-1 h^-1) accompanied by a selectivity of 92.3% to AP. The good reaction performance can be attributed to the cooperation of defect engineering and architecture design, which can synergistically facilitate the EB oxidation performance by augmenting the intrinsic reactivity and accessibility of active sites. This work presents a reliable route to construct a high-performance transitional metal oxide catalyst via manipulation of electronic effect and assembly architecture for the selective oxidation of EB and beyond.