Enhanced catalytic performance by oxygen vacancy and active interface originated from facile reduction of OMS-2

•A facile reduction strategy was applied to enhance the catalytic activity of OMS-2.•The reduction treatment on OMS-2 produced larger amount of oxygen vacancies.•The reduction treatment on OMS-2 produced active heterogeneous interface.•The oxygen vacancy and active interface were favorable for the catalytic activity.•The OMS-2 catalysts displayed excellent combustion activity for dimethyl ether.

Manganese oxide octahedral molecular sieves (OMS-2) is a kind of excellent redox catalysts, a key challenge still remains to further increase their catalytic performance. Herein, we report a facile reduction method to enhance the catalytic activity of OMS-2 by producing more oxygen vacancy and creating an active interface between the main phase MnO2 and the minor phase Mn3O4. Compared to the pristine OMS-2, the OMS-2 catalyst reduced in a relatively short time exhibits superior performance for dimethyl ether combustion with a starting-off temperature of 163 °C and a complete combustion temperature of 230 °C. Such enhanced activity can be ascribed to the higher reducibility, the more oxygen vacancy, and the active heterogeneous interface. These findings open up a new way to design highly efficient catalysts, especially the metal oxides-based catalysts, for redox reactions.

Graphical abstractWe report a facile NaBH4 reduction method to enhance the catalytic activity of OMS-2. The moderate reduction treatment can create oxygen vacancies and active interface on the OMS-2 structure. The reduced OMS-2 exhibit substantially enhanced catalytic combustion performance for dimethyl ether.Download high-res image (259KB)Download full-size image