Sustainable methane utilization technology via photocatalytic halogenation with alkali halides

Catalyst synthesis and characterization

In this work, the Cu, which has been proven to play a critical role as active sites for methane activation on particulate methane monooxygenase in nature, is selected to dope TiO₂ photocatalysts for methane halogenation^15,22. The Cu-doped porous TiO₂ nanostructures (denoted as X%Cu–TiO₂, where X represents the molar percentage of Cu atoms in precursors) are synthesized in gram-scale via a simple sol–gel process (Supplementary Fig. 2a). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images (Supplementary Figs. 2b, c, 3) reveal the porous morphology of…