Conversion of methane to C2 liquid oxygenates by Ru atom arrays

Fanle Bu; Yurui Xue; Mingzi Sun; Bolong Huang; Jiayu Yan; Lu Qi; Shuya Zhao; Yuliang Li

doi:10.1038/s41467-025-62785-9

Conversion of methane to C₂ liquid oxygenates by Ru atom arrays

Fanle Bu, Yurui Xue^*, Mingzi Sun, Bolong Huang^*, Jiayu Yan, Lu Qi, Shuya Zhao, Yuliang Li^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Chemistry

Research output: Journal Publications and Reviews › RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The efficient conversion of methane to valuable C₂ liquid oxygenates still remains silent. Here we show a new catalytic system of C-C coupling towards the C₂ liquid oxygenates with high selectivity and productivity by the selective anchoring zero-valent ruthenium atoms from individual ones to two and three atoms in the electron-rich 18-carbon cavity of graphdiyne. Theoretical calculations demonstrate that Ru₃-GDY supplies neighboring robust active sites to promote efficient C-C coupling to C₂ liquid oxygenates, due to the p-d coupling resonance that guarantees the distributed charge among Ru₃ sites resulting in active region to accelerate the methane oxidation. Our results show Ru atoms in GDY enable the highly efficient and selective activation of CH₄ to the key ·CH₃ and ·CH₂OH intermediates, which allows the selective C-C coupling to gain C₂ liquid oxygenates and shows the high selectivity (67%) and yields (7.25 mmol g_cat⁻¹ h⁻¹) towards C₂ liquid oxygenates. © The Author(s) 2025.

Original language	English
Article number	7466
Number of pages	10
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	16
Online published	12 Aug 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-62785-9
Publication status	Published - 2025

Funding

This work was supported by the Basic Science Center Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22388101), the National Key Research and Development Project of China (2022YFA1204500, 2022YFA1204501, 2022YFA1204503), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2021JQ07 and ZR2020ZD38) and the Key Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDPB13).

Publisher's Copyright Statement

This full text is made available under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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Cite this

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title = "Conversion of methane to C2 liquid oxygenates by Ru atom arrays",

abstract = "The efficient conversion of methane to valuable C2 liquid oxygenates still remains silent. Here we show a new catalytic system of C-C coupling towards the C2 liquid oxygenates with high selectivity and productivity by the selective anchoring zero-valent ruthenium atoms from individual ones to two and three atoms in the electron-rich 18-carbon cavity of graphdiyne. Theoretical calculations demonstrate that Ru3-GDY supplies neighboring robust active sites to promote efficient C-C coupling to C2 liquid oxygenates, due to the p-d coupling resonance that guarantees the distributed charge among Ru3 sites resulting in active region to accelerate the methane oxidation. Our results show Ru atoms in GDY enable the highly efficient and selective activation of CH4 to the key ·CH3 and ·CH2OH intermediates, which allows the selective C-C coupling to gain C2 liquid oxygenates and shows the high selectivity (67%) and yields (7.25 mmol gcat−1 h−1) towards C2 liquid oxygenates. {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2025.",

author = "Fanle Bu and Yurui Xue and Mingzi Sun and Bolong Huang and Jiayu Yan and Lu Qi and Shuya Zhao and Yuliang Li",

year = "2025",

doi = "10.1038/s41467-025-62785-9",

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journal = "Nature Communications",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - Conversion of methane to C2 liquid oxygenates by Ru atom arrays

AU - Bu, Fanle

AU - Xue, Yurui

AU - Sun, Mingzi

AU - Huang, Bolong

AU - Yan, Jiayu

AU - Qi, Lu

AU - Zhao, Shuya

AU - Li, Yuliang

PY - 2025

Y1 - 2025

N2 - The efficient conversion of methane to valuable C2 liquid oxygenates still remains silent. Here we show a new catalytic system of C-C coupling towards the C2 liquid oxygenates with high selectivity and productivity by the selective anchoring zero-valent ruthenium atoms from individual ones to two and three atoms in the electron-rich 18-carbon cavity of graphdiyne. Theoretical calculations demonstrate that Ru3-GDY supplies neighboring robust active sites to promote efficient C-C coupling to C2 liquid oxygenates, due to the p-d coupling resonance that guarantees the distributed charge among Ru3 sites resulting in active region to accelerate the methane oxidation. Our results show Ru atoms in GDY enable the highly efficient and selective activation of CH4 to the key ·CH3 and ·CH2OH intermediates, which allows the selective C-C coupling to gain C2 liquid oxygenates and shows the high selectivity (67%) and yields (7.25 mmol gcat−1 h−1) towards C2 liquid oxygenates. © The Author(s) 2025.

AB - The efficient conversion of methane to valuable C2 liquid oxygenates still remains silent. Here we show a new catalytic system of C-C coupling towards the C2 liquid oxygenates with high selectivity and productivity by the selective anchoring zero-valent ruthenium atoms from individual ones to two and three atoms in the electron-rich 18-carbon cavity of graphdiyne. Theoretical calculations demonstrate that Ru3-GDY supplies neighboring robust active sites to promote efficient C-C coupling to C2 liquid oxygenates, due to the p-d coupling resonance that guarantees the distributed charge among Ru3 sites resulting in active region to accelerate the methane oxidation. Our results show Ru atoms in GDY enable the highly efficient and selective activation of CH4 to the key ·CH3 and ·CH2OH intermediates, which allows the selective C-C coupling to gain C2 liquid oxygenates and shows the high selectivity (67%) and yields (7.25 mmol gcat−1 h−1) towards C2 liquid oxygenates. © The Author(s) 2025.

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DO - 10.1038/s41467-025-62785-9

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