title: Photocatalytic oxidation of methane over silver decorated zinc oxide nanocatalysts.
abstract: The search for active catalysts that efficiently oxidize methane under ambient conditions remains a challenging task for both C1 utilization and atmospheric cleansing. Here, we show that when the particle size of zinc oxide is reduced down to the nanoscale, it exhibits high activity for methane oxidation under simulated sunlight illumination, and nano silver decoration further enhances the photo-activity via the surface plasmon resonance. The high quantum yield of 8% at wavelengths <400 nm and over 0.1% at wavelengths ∼470 nm achieved on the silver decorated zinc oxide nanostructures shows great promise for atmospheric methane oxidation. Moreover, the nano-particulate composites can efficiently photo-oxidize other small molecular hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane and ethylene, and in particular, can dehydrogenize methane to generate ethane, ethylene and so on. On the basis of the experimental results, a two-step photocatalytic reaction process is suggested to account for the methane photo-oxidation.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Design and Assembly of Functional Nanostructures and Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou 350002, China.|Department of Physics, Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China.
authors.forename: Xuxing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Design and Assembly of Functional Nanostructures and Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou 350002, China.
authors.forename: Yunpeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Design and Assembly of Functional Nanostructures and Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou 350002, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoyang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Pan
authors.affiliation: Research School of Chemistry, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cortie
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China.
authors.forename: Xintang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Design and Assembly of Functional Nanostructures and Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou 350002, China.
authors.forename: Zhiguo
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yi