Tuning the adsorption energy of methanol molecules along Ni-N-doped carbon phase boundaries via the Mott-Schottky effect for highly efficient dehydrogenation of gas-phase methanol.

Engineering the adsorption of molecules on active sites is an integral and challenging part for the design of highly efficient transition-metal-based catalysts for methanol dehydrogenation. Here we report a Mott-Schottky catalyst composed of Ni nanoparticles and tailorable nitrogen-doped carbon-foam (Ni/NCF) and thus tunable adsorption energy for highly efficient and selective dehydrogenation of gas-phase methanol to hydrogen and CO even under relatively high weight hourly space velocities (WHSV). Both theoretical and experimental results reveal the key role of the rectifying contact at the Ni/NCF boundaries in tailoring the electron density of Ni species and enhancing the absorption energies of methanol molecules, which leads to a remarkably high turnover frequency (TOF) value (356 mol methanol mol-1 Ni h-1 at 350 °C), 10-fold outpacing the bench-marked transition-metal catalysts in the literature.