This work aimed at elucidating the beneficial effect of plasma treatment on the catalytic performance of palladium (Pd) catalysts in methane combustion with the ordered mesoporous molecular sieve Al-MCM-41 as the model support. The plasma treated Pd/Al-MCM-41 catalyst exhibited a higher initial activity and a better stability in comparison with the untreated counterpart catalyst. To clarify the plasma effect, the catalysts were characterized by N-2 sorption analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), temperature-programmed desorption of ammonia (NH3-TPD), pyridine adsorption-infrared spectroscopy (Py-IR), high resolution-transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and temperature-programmed reduction (CH4-TPR) experiments. The results obtained confirmed that palladium oxide (PdO) was the active phase. Plasma treatment enhanced the acidity of catalyst and improved the dispersion of PdO particles, which lead to a higher initial activity. The better stability for plasma treated Pd-based catalyst was proved to be closely related to the stronger interaction between palladium oxide and the molecular sieve support. In addition, the sintering of PdO particles over the plasma treated catalyst was not significant during the stability test. These findings may provide useful guidelines for further catalyst design for methane combustion. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.