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Highly photoactive fullerene-cored star-shaped polyporphyrin incorporated TiO2, ZnCPP-Fullerol@TiO2, was prepared from the immobilization of fullerene-cored star-shaped polyporphyrin nanospheres, produced by the esterification of carboxyl porphyrin with fullerols, on the surface of TiO2 via the excess hydroxyl groups of fullerols, and used for rhodamine B degradation under light irradiation. The synthesized catalyst was fully characterized by various techniques, including ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), cyclic voltammetry and thermogravimetric analysis etc. The results demonstrated that the insertion of fullerols in ZnCPP-Fullerol@TiO2 produced an enhancement in photocurrent efficiency and the photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B. The degradation rate of rhodamine B was 94.7% after treatment with light irradiation for 150 min, and the reaction rate constant was k = 0.0193 s−1 for ZnCPP-Fullerol@TiO2. This constant was much higher than that of ZnCPP@TiO2(0.00723 s−1) due to the improvement in the separation of electron-hole pairs and the availability of good sites for adsorption and catalysis. Moreover ZnCPP-Fullerol@TiO2 exhibits excellent reusability, and a reasonable mechanism for the enhanced reactivity was proposed.

Electrocatalytic water splitting to realize the sustainable production of hydrogen is one of the key ways to gain renewable clean energy. The development of the ruthenium-terpyridine-bipyridine (bpyRutpy) complexes used as efficient homogeneous water oxidation catalysts is one of the currently hot research fields. All catalytic active sites of the homogeneous molecular catalyst are fully utilized, and show a high catalytic efficiency. However, the homogeneous molecular catalyst has some intrinsic shortages such as difficulty on separation, recovery and regeneration, and high cost. In view of this, we synthesized the multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)-based heterogeneous catalyst, MWCNT-bpyRutpy, by covalently bonding the ruthenium-based complex onto the carbon nanotubes, in order to achieve the maximum molecular catalytic efficiency of the complex. The synthesized catalyst is fully characterized by mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, photoelectron spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and thermogravimetry. The formation of the nanocatalyst via fusing Ruthenium complexes to MWCNTs promotes the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) kinetics, enhances intrinsic activity, and increases the specific surface area of electrochemical activity, and achieve excellent OER performance with a low overpotential of 436 mV at 10mAcm2, a low Tafel slope of 77.2 mV, and a relatively high turnover frequency (TOF) of 0.5833 s−1 at an overpotential of 400 mV.

Rare-earth oxides of La2O3 and CeO2 were used as promoters in the preparation of K2MoS4/SiO2 catalyst for methanthiol synthesis from syngas blending with H2S. The experiment results showed that the addition of La2O3 or CeO2 to K2MoS4/SiO2 was able to improve the catalytic performance in methanthiol synthesis both in activity and selectivity. La2O3 displayed more beneficial effects than CeO2 and the catalyst modified with La2O3 presented a selectivity of 98.6% for methanthiol. In the catalysts modified with La2O3 or CeO2, less K2MoS4 decomposed to MoS2 and more to the Mo–S–K phase, which is favorable and active for methanthiol synthesis, was determined by XRD. XPS results revealed that La2O3 was able to protect molybdenum species from deep reduction and to raise the concentration ratio of Mo6+ to Mo4+ in the catalysts, and also to depress the formation of (S–S)2− species which may induce the formation of hydrocarbons.

The catalysts K2MoS4/SiO2 promoted with transition metal oxides Fe2O3, CoO, NiO and MnO2 were prepared and used to catalyze the synthesis of methanethiol from H2S‐containing syngas. The results of activity assay show that the catalysts promoted with Fe2O3, CoO and NiO can remarkably increase the hour space yield of methanethiol. Nevertheless, MnO2 was found to have a disadvantageous effect on the selectivity of methanethiol. The results of XRD and XPS characterization indicate that the addition of the transition metal oxides promoters is in favor of the formation of a Mo–S–K active phase and also retards the decomposition of K2MoS4 to MoS2, thereby suppressing both the deep reduction of Mo species and the formation of (S–S)2 species, which are reflected by the increment of the concentration ratios of both Mo6+/Mo4+ and S2/(S–S)2.

Catalysts based on rare earth complexes such as CeO2/2CeF3, Sm2O3/4CeF3, Nd2O3/ 4CeF3 and Y2O3/4CeF3 were prepared. These catalysts were active for the oxidative dehydrogenation of propane with very high selectivity to propene. At 500°C and 6000 h−1, using CeO2/2CeF3 as the catalyst, the conversion of propane was 41.3%, selectivity to propene reached 81.1%, propene yield was 33.5%. XRD results indicated that F− and O2− were exchanged in the lattices. Raman spectra showed that the O 2 − might be the active oxygen species in propane oxidative dehydrogenation.

The multi-valence anion modified complex catalyst Y2O3–CeF3 was found to be selective for the oxidative dehydrogenation of isobutane to isobutene at a relatively high conversion.