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Selective electrocatalytic oxidation of alcohols to value-added aldehydes has attracted increasing attention. However, due to its higher reactivity than alcohol, the aldehyde is easily over-oxidized to acid in alkaline electrolytes. Herein we realize the selective electrooxidation of alcohol to aldehyde on NiO by tuning the local microenvironment to salt out the aldehyde from the reaction system. The origin of the high selectivity was found to be the inhibition of the hydration of aldehydes, which is the result of the decreased alkalinity and the increased cation and substrate concentration. This strategy could salt out the aldehyde at the gas|electrolyte interface from the electrooxidation of alcohol with 100 % selectivity and be easily extended to other selective oxidation reactions, such as 5-hydroxymethyl furfural (HMF) to 2,5-furandicarboxaldehyde (DFF) and amine to an imine.
Xu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.