Photocatalytic ethane conversion on rutile TiO(110): identifying the role of the ethyl radical.

Oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane (CH, ODHE) is a promising approach to producing ethene (CH) in the chemical industry. However, the ODHE needs to be operated at a high temperature, and realizing the ODHE under mild conditions is still a big challenge. Herein, using photocatalytic ODHE to obtain CH has been achieved successfully on a model rutile(R)-TiO(110) surface with high selectivity. Initially, the CH reacts with hole trapped O centers to produce ethyl radicals , which can be precisely detected by a sensitive TOF method, and then the majority of the radicals spontaneously dehydrogenate into CH without another photo-generated hole. In addition, parts of the radicals rebound with diversified surface sites to produce C products migration along the surface. The mechanistic model built in this work not only advances our knowledge of the C-H bond activation and low temperature CH conversion, but also provides new opportunities for realizing the ODHE with high CH efficiency under mild conditions.