Fig. 4: Mechanistic insights for methane activation on a B2O3 surface.
From: Direct conversion of methane to formaldehyde and CO on B2O3 catalysts
a Schematic diagram of the plausible pathway of methane selective oxidation to formaldehyde on B2O3-based catalysts. b Parity plots for the measured rate data of methane selective oxidation on B2O3/Al2O3 and those predicted using Eq. 1 (the regression-fitted parameters shown in Supplementary Table 3). In a, K1 and K2 are equilibrium constants for the corresponding steps, and k3 is the kinetic constant for hydrogen abstraction of the surface methoxy species by a neighboring hydroxyl.
