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Breaking the conversion-selectivity trade-off in benzyl alcohol oxidation through synergistic CoCu dual-site
Fan Xue1, Jiejie Li2, Jingyue Bi1
1State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 211816, PR China.
Abstract:
Reconciling intrinsic conversion-selectivity trade-offs constitutes a fundamental challenge for efficient catalytic aldehyde production. In this work, we designed a nitrogen-coordinated cobalt‑copper dual single-atom catalyst (Co1Cu1/NC) that circumvents the intrinsic conversion-selectivity trade-off for benzyl alcohol oxidation to benzaldehyde, achieving 95.6 % conversion and 99.9 % selectivity within merely 2 h, significantly outperforming Co1/NC (72.5 %) and Cu1/NC (5.0 %) single atom catalysts (SACs). Mechanistic insights reveal that the synergistic interaction between Co and Cu atoms at CoCuN8 sites effectively modulates the charge distribution of active sites, enabling simultaneous optimization of molecular oxygen activation and substrate adsorption while promoting immediate benzaldehyde desorption. This work demonstrates how tailored bimetallic cooperativity in dual-atom catalysts unlocks efficient multistep reaction pathways.
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