Highly Selective Photocatalytic Aerobic Oxidation of Methane to Oxygenates with Water over W‐doped TiO₂

Abstract

Abstract Highly selective conversion of methane to oxygenates with O 2 as a green oxidant remains a great challenge. It is still difficult to suppress the generation of CO x ( x =1, 2) as undesired by‐products due to unavoidable overoxidation reaction. Hence, tungsten‐doped (W‐doped) TiO 2 photocatalysts were designed with a tunable band structure for photocatalytic oxidation of methane to C 1 oxygenates using O 2 at low temperature (30 °C). The W‐doping effectively modified the electronic and band structure of pristine TiO 2 to enhance photocatalytic performance. Liquid oxygenates productivity could reach as high as 12.2 mmol g −1 with high selectivity of 99.4 %. Moreover, CO x selectivity was effectively decreased from 21.2 % over TiO 2 to 0.6 % for W‐doped catalyst. Detailed characterizations further disclosed that W‐doping not only enhanced light absorption, but also promoted the separation of photo‐generated carriers to improve methane conversion. This work provides new insights into the design of highly efficient photocatalysts for methane oxidation.