Highly Dispersed Ni Atoms and O₃ Promote Room-Temperature Catalytic Oxidation

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 (O₂) activation. Here, we present a dual-stimulation strategy to tackle these two issues. Specifically, we import highly dispersed nickel (Ni) atoms onto MnO₂ to enrich its oxygen vacancies (reactive sites). Then, we use molecular ozone (O₃) with a lower activation energy as an oxidant instead of molecular O₂. With such dual stimulations, the constructed O₃-Ni/MnO₂ catalytic system shows boosted room-temperature activity for toluene oxidation with a toluene conversion of up to 98%, compared with the O₃-MnO₂ (Ni-free) system with only 50% conversion and the inactive O₂-Ni/MnO₂ (O₃-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.