The surface restructuring of copper oxides with mixed oxidation-states and their efficient CO oxidation properties

In this work, a series of Cu-based samples have been obtained via a controllable surface restructuring method, including cubic Cu 2 O (S1), CuO-Cu 2 O (S2) and irregular CuO nanosheets (S3). Notably, S2 samples possess more superior catalytic activities towards CO oxidation than S1 and S3, even better than that of Cu 2 O cubes with in-situ CuO films during CO oxidation. This observation can be mainly attributed to the interplay between Cu 2 O and CuO in S2. The lattice oxygens provided by CuO are the preferred adsorption sites for CO molecules, then the generated oxygen vacancies could be refilled by O adatoms dissociated from Cu 2 O.