Oxidation catalysis not only plays a crucial role in the current chemical industry for the production of key intermediates such as alcohols, epoxides, aldehydes, ketones and organic acids, but also will contribute to the establishment of novel green and sustainable chemical processes. This review is devoted to dealing with selective oxidation reactions, which are important from the viewpoint of green and sustainable chemistry and still remain challenging. Actually, some well-known highly challenging chemical reactions involve selective oxidation reactions, such as the selective oxidation of methane by oxygen. On the other hand some important oxidation reactions, such as the aerobic oxidation of alcohols in the liquid phase and the preferential oxidation of carbon monoxide in hydrogen, have attracted much attention in recent years because of their high significance in green or energy chemistry. This article summarizes recent advances in the development of new catalytic materials or novel catalytic systems for these challenging oxidation reactions. A deep scientific understanding of the mechanisms, active species and active structures for these systems are also discussed. Furthermore, connections among these distinct catalytic oxidation systems are highlighted, to gain insight for the breakthrough in rational design of efficient catalytic systems for challenging oxidation reactions.

Carbon nanotubes are promising materials for various applications. In recent years, progress in manufacturing and functionalizing carbon nanotubes has been made to achieve the control of bulk and surface properties including the wettability, acid–base properties, adsorption, electric conductivity and capacitance. In order to gain the optimal benefit of carbon nanotubes, comprehensive understanding on manufacturing and functionalizing carbon nanotubes ought to be systematically developed. This review summarizes methodologies of manufacturing carbon nanotubes via arc discharge, laser ablation and chemical vapor deposition and functionalizing carbon nanotubes through surface oxidation and activation, doping of heteroatoms, halogenation, sulfonation, grafting, polymer coating, noncovalent functionalization and nanoparticle attachment. The characterization techniques detecting the bulk nature and surface properties as well as the effects of various functionalization approaches on modifying the surface properties for specific applications in catalysis including heterogeneous catalysis, photocatalysis, photoelectrocatalysis and electrocatalysis are highlighted.

Metal and metal oxide catalysts for non-oxidative ethane/propane dehydrogenation are outlined with respect to catalyst synthesis, structure–property relationship and catalytic mechanism.

Nitrogen-doped carbon materials (NCs) are extensively studied for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). However, the nature of active sites of pyridinic nitrogen (N_P) or graphitic nitrogen (N_G) on NCs is still under debate. Herein, we demonstrated that the ORR activity of NCs in alkaline media depended on the electronic synergism between N_P and N_G, rather than any single type of N. We measured the transferable electrons of NCs by absorption spectroscopy using 7′7′8′8-tetracyanoquinodimethane as an electron acceptor. The transferable electron amount of NCs is relevant to either N_P or N_G, leading to the [N_P] : [N_G] ratio as an electron transfer descriptor of NCs in a reverse volcano curve manner across nineteen NCs. The similar dependence of ORR activity on the [N_P] : [N_G] ratio of NCs was also discovered, demonstrating the synergistic effect of N_P and N_G. These results provide a new angle to understand the nature of ORR activity of NCs and optimize the ORR catalyst.