Research Director

Takeshi Matsumoto

Tokyo Institute of Technology
Institute of Innovative Research
Specially Appointed Associate Professor
website

Outline

The direct conversion of methane to useful chemicals, i.e., olefins and aromatic compounds, is of great importance and has been strongly desired. However, conversion of methane to these useful chemicals with using oxygen as electron and proton acceptors is not easy, because of the higher reactivity of the desired products toward overoxidation reactions. In this project, I focus on the development of structurally well-defined metal sulfide cluster based catalyst for direct olefination of methane, with utilizing sulfur as soft electron and proton acceptor. The elucidation of the correlation between the reactivity and structure of the cluster surface would be examined.