This is a study of the influence of oxide supports (alumina and titania) and acidic or basic promoters upon the molecular structures of supported vanadium-oxide catalysts and their corresponding catalytic chemistry. Information on molecular structure is provided by Raman spectroscopy, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance, and X- ray adsorption near-edge spectroscopy. In situ spectroscopic studies reveal the influence of the reaction environment upon the molecular structures of surface vanadium oxide. Reactivity of the catalysts is determined from studies of catalytic oxidation of methane and methanol. The objective of this work is to develop structure-activity relationships for supported metal-oxide catalysts; such an achievement would make feasible the design of catalysts for specific applications. Supported vanadium oxide is chosen as the initial model because it has unusually diverse catalytic chemistry, its inorganic and structural chemistry has been studied by others, and it gives strong signals for powerful characterization techniques.
