Mixed metal oxides and catalytic redox cycles

Abstract

Redox catalysis by metal oxides is of great interest for various industrial applications and for probing fundamental aspects of surface reactivity. Various types of oxide materials and their mixtures in the form of doped oxides, supported oxides and binary/ternary/quaternary crystalline oxide systems have been investigated, leading to significant progress in strategies for the controlled synthesis of new materials and probes of their structural and electronic properties. The progress in development of more accurate and efficient computational methods has led to new tools for exploring the mechanistic details and reaction paths. The understanding of relations between the compositions of oxides and their catalytic reactivity and selectivity remain poorly understood due to the complexity and the great diversity of the materials and reaction mechanisms. An overview of the different varieties of mixed metal oxides, their preparation and characterization methods and their catalytic applications is provided, together with a discussion on redox mechanisms and how composition–reactivity relations can be better understood by combining experiments and computations.