Unraveling the roles of oxygen vacancies in tungsten‐based ionic liquid materials for enhanced catalytic oxidative desulfurization

Abstract Defect engineering is often used to improve the performance of catalysts. Here, plasma etching was first used as a strategy to introduce defects to modify the phosphotungstic acid‐based ionic liquids (C 14 PWIL) catalyst for oxidative desulfurization (ODS) in fuel. The valence band/conduction band value of the catalyst indicates that the formation of oxygen vacancies plays an essential role in enhancing the oxidation capacity. In combination with X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy results, the enriched electrons in the oxygen vacancies can increase the electron density on the catalyst surface, which promotes the electron migration process between the catalyst and H 2 O 2 , thus favoring the activation of H 2 O 2 and enabling an efficient ODS process. The desulfurization efficiency of C 14 PWIL‐P at room temperature is 3 times that of C 14 PWIL, which exhibits good cycling stability.