Au-Decorated NbO Featuring Unsaturated Niobium Centers and Photoinduced Oxygen Vacancies for Photocatalytic Oxidative Coupling of Methane to C Hydrocarbons.

Photocatalytic oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) holds considerable potential for producing value-added chemicals. However, this technology currently faces two major challenges: low methane conversion and significant overoxidation. Herein, we report a gold (Au) decorated niobium pentoxide (NbO) featuring unsaturated Nb centers and photoinduced oxygen vacancies (O), which achieved a CH conversion rate of 3.