Fenton‐Inactive Cd Enables Highly Selective O₂‐Derived Domino Reaction

Abstract

Advancing and deploying Fenton‐inactive Cd that combines excellent catalytic activity, selectivity, and stability remains a serious challenge, predominantly owing to the difficulty in regulating the intrinsic electronic states and local geometric structures of such fully occupied d10s2 configuration. In this work, a combination of experiments and theoretical calculations reveals that the incorporation of boron (B) enables the tuning of the average oxidation state of Cd0 to Cdδ+, facilitating electron localization and implementing a different electrocatalytic preference compared to conventional d10‐electron configurations. The resulting Cd(B) catalyst demonstrates high selectivity (>90% on average) in the O2‐to‐H2O2 conversion, negligible activity loss over 100 h, and a superior H2O2 production rate (15.5 mol∙gcat−1 h−1 at −100 mA). More unexpectedly, the in situ generated H2O2 exhibits a unique advantage over commercial products, selectively oxidizing cinnamaldehyde to benzaldehyde by modulating the practical current.