Regulating oxygen activity of perovskites to promote NOx oxidation and reduction kinetics

Understanding the adsorption and oxidation of NO on metal oxides is of immense interest to environmental and atmospheric (bio)chemistry. Here, we show that the surface oxygen activity, defined as the oxygen 2p-band centre relative to the Fermi level, dictates the adsorption and surface coverage of NOx and the kinetics of NO oxidation for La1−xSrxCoO3 perovskites. Density functional theory and ambient-pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy revealed favourable NO adsorption on surface oxygen sites. Increasing the surface oxygen activity by increasing the strontium substitution led to stronger adsorption and greater storage of NO2, which resulted in more adsorbed nitrogen-like species and molecular nitrogen formed upon exposure to CO. The NO oxidation kinetics exhibited a volcano trend with surface oxygen activity, centred at La0.8Sr0.2CoO3 and with an intrinsic activity comparable to state-of-the-art catalysts. We rationalize the volcano trend by showing that increasing the NO adsorption enhances the oxidation kinetics, although NO adsorption that is too strong poisons the surface oxygen sites with adsorbed NO2 to impede the kinetics. Understanding the mechanism for the catalytic conversion of NOx is crucial to develop superior greenhouse gas abatement schemes, although it remains challenging. Here, the authors reveal important aspects of the redox properties of NOx on a La1–xSrxCoO3 perovskite by a combination of density functional theory calculations and ambient-pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.