The collaborative research team of Prof. Jeong-Young Park and Prof. Yeon Sik Jung has developed a new catalytic platform that guides methanol reactions toward cleaner products. In the methanol oxidation reaction, methanol can turn into methyl formate, a valuable chemical feedstock, or into carbon dioxide, an unwanted byproduct. Achieving both a fast reaction and high selectivity for methyl formate has long been a challenge in catalysis.

To tackle this, the team designed highly ordered cerium oxide (CeOx) nanowires grown on platinum. Unlike conventional catalysts made of randomly scattered particles, these aligned nanowires provide a model system that allows scientists to study and control the influence of oxide properties on catalytic behavior precisely.

The researchers discovered that the crystallinity of the nanowires plays a decisive role: ordered crystalline structures improved both the reaction rate and the selectivity for methyl formate. Even more significantly, nanowires engineered with oxygen vacancies—tiny missing atoms in the oxide lattice—produced more energetic “hot electrons” to enable efficient charge transfer at the interface. As a result, these vacancy-engineered samples exhibited 1.47-times higher selectivity for methyl formate and 2.12-times higher chemicurrent yield compared to the reference samples.

Prof. Jung, from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, remarked, “Vacancy engineering and nanowire alignment are powerful strategies for designing next-generation catalysts.” Prof. Park, from the Department of Chemistry, added, “This approach opens the door to cleaner and more efficient chemical production, offering insights that are valuable for both sustainable energy and industrial chemistry.”

The majority of this work was carried out by postdoctoral researchers Dr. Gyu Rac Lee and Dr. Kyoungjae Song. This research was financially supported by a Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) grant funded by the Korean government (MOTIE) (No. 20214000000650, Energy Innovation Research Center for Fuel Cell Technology), a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (2022R1A2C3004242), and a National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (RS-2024-00450102).
2025 KI Newsletter