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Selective oxidation

Methane oxidation by catalyst reduction

The selective oxidation of methane to methanol using O2 under mild conditions has been a challenge for decades. Now, this transformation is selectively achieved at ambient temperature with productivity as high as 67.4 μmol gcat−1 h−1 on a reduced phosphomolybdate catalyst, where H2 is required to keep the catalyst surface in a reduced state.

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Fig. 1: The active site of MMO and reaction pathways in different systems.

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Correspondence to Liang Wang.

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Wang, L., Xiao, FS. Methane oxidation by catalyst reduction. Nat Catal 6, 866–867 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-023-01044-w

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