Direct observation of the active sites in methane dehydroaromatization by NMR

In a recent Angewandte Chemie paper, Deng and co-workers used solid-state NMR spectroscopy to identify the active sites and reaction intermediates for Mo/ZSM-5 catalyzed methane dehydroaromatization reaction. The spatially proximate acidic proton-Mo sites were directly correlated with the reaction activity, and the authors concluded that olefines served as the reaction intermediates.