We report the novel near-infrared (NIR) photocatalysis of YF(3) : Yb(3+),Tm(3+)/TiO(2) core/shell nanoparticles. The core/shell nanoparticles show photocatalytic activity under the NIR irradiation. This study demonstrates that the NIR energy can be used as the driving source for photocatalysis besides the UV and visible energy.

Propane dehydrogenation (PDH) to propene is an important alternative to oil-based cracking processes, to produce this industrially important platform chemical1,2. The commercial PDH technologies utilizing Cr-containing (refs. 3,4) or Pt-containing (refs. 5–8) catalysts suffer from the toxicity of Cr(vi) compounds or the need to use ecologically harmful chlorine for catalyst regeneration9. Here, we introduce a method for preparation of environmentally compatible supported catalysts based on commercial ZnO. This metal oxide and a support (zeolite or common metal oxide) are used as a physical mixture or in the form of two layers with ZnO as the upstream layer. Supported ZnOx species are in situ formed through a reaction of support OH groups with Zn atoms generated from ZnO upon reductive treatment above 550 °C. Using different complementary characterization methods, we identify the decisive role of defective OH groups for the formation of active ZnOx species. For benchmarking purposes, the developed ZnO–silicalite-1 and an analogue of commercial K–CrOx/Al2O3 were tested in the same setup under industrially relevant conditions at close propane conversion over about 400 h on propane stream. The developed catalyst reveals about three times higher propene productivity at similar propene selectivity.

Environmentally friendly and low-cost catalysts are required for large-scale non-oxidative dehydrogenation of propane to propene (PDH) to replace currently used CrO x -or Pt-based catalysts. This work introduces ZnO-containing ZrO 2 -or MZrO x -supported (M=Ce, La, Ti or Y) catalysts. The most active materials outperformed the state-of-the-art catalysts with supported CrO x , GaO x , ZnO x or VO x species as well as bulk ZrO 2 -based catalysts without ZnO. The spacetime yield of propene of 1.25 kg C3H6 •kg -1 cat •h -1 at a propane conversion of about 30% with propene selectivity of 95% was obtained over Zn(4 wt%)/TiZrO x at 550°C.For deriving key insights into the structure of active sites, reactivity, selectivity and onstream stability, the catalysts were characterized by XRD, HRTEM, EDX mapping, XPS, X-ray absorption, CO-TPR, CO 2 -TPD, NH 3 -TPD, Pyridine-FTIR, operando UV-Vis spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, TPO and temporal analysis of products. In contrast with previous reports used bulk ZrO 2 -based catalysts without ZnO, coordinatively unsaturated Zr cations are not the main active sites in the ZnO-containing catalysts.Supported ZnO x species were concluded to participate in the PDH reaction. The current X-ray absorption analysis proved that their structure is affected by the type of metal oxide used as dopant for ZrO 2 and on crystallinity of ZrO 2 . Isolated tricoordinated Zn 2+ species