The surface restructuring of copper oxides with mixed oxidation-states and their efficient CO oxidation properties

Abstract

In this work, a series of Cu-based samples have been obtained via a controllable surface restructuring method, including cubic Cu2O (S1), CuO-Cu2O (S2) and irregular CuO nanosheets (S3). Notably, S2 samples possess more superior catalytic activities towards CO oxidation than S1 and S3, even better than that of Cu2O cubes with in-situ CuO films during CO oxidation. This observation can be mainly attributed to the interplay between Cu2O and CuO in S2. The lattice oxygens provided by CuO are the preferred adsorption sites for CO molecules, then the generated oxygen vacancies could be refilled by O adatoms dissociated from Cu2O.