Commercial vanadium oxide catalysts exhibit high efficiency
for
the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NO with NH3,
especially in the presence of NO2 (i.e., occurrence of
fast NH3–SCR). The high-activity sites and their
working principle for the fast NH3–SCR reaction,
however, remain elusive. Here, by combining in situ spectroscopy, isotopic labeling experiments, and density functional
theory (DFT) calculations, we demonstrate that polymeric vanadyl species
act as the main active sites in the fast SCR reaction because the
coupling effect of the polymeric structure alters the elementary reaction
step and effectively avoids the high energy barrier of the rate-determining
step over monomeric vanadyl species. This study unveils the high-activity
dinuclear mechanism of the NO2-involved SCR reaction over
vanadia-based catalysts and provides a fundamental basis for developing
high-efficiency and low V2O5-loading SCR catalysts.