Credit: Image courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory. A version appears in Huang E., et al., Selective Methane Oxidation to Methanol on ZnO/Cu2O/Cu(111) Catalysts: Multiple Site-Dependent Behaviors. Journal of the American Chemical Society 143, 45 (2021).
A scanning tunneling electron microscope image of a copper-zinc oxide catalyst that converts methane to methanol with and without water. Insets show the molecular structures of three different phases (blue is zinc, red is oxygen).