784
T. Liu et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 690 (2017) 783e790
(224 hꢀ1 at 298 K and 742 hꢀ1 at 323 K) for hydrous hydrazine
dehydrogenation.
centrifugation, washed with water and dried under vacuum at
room temperature for 12 h.
Additionally, the NiPtP catalyst without GO was also prepared
using the similar synthetic procedure.
2. Experimental
2.2.3. Syntheses of NiPt/rGO catalysts
2.1. Materials
NiPt/rGO catalysts were prepared by in-situ reduction of
NiCl2$6H2O and H2PtCl6$6H2O in water solution by used NaBH4 as
reducing agent. In a typical experiment, 20 mg GO were dissolved
in 25 mL of water. Ultrasonication was required to get a uniform
Hydrazine monohydrate (H2NNH2$H2O, Aladdin reagent Co.,
Ltd, >98%), nickel(II) chloride hexahydrate (NiCl2$6H2O, Sinopharm
Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd, >98%), chloroplatinic acid hexahydrate
(H2PtCl6$6H2O, Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC, 99%), sodium hypo-
phosphite (NaH2PO2, Aladdin reagent Co., Ltd, 99%), sodium boro-
hydride (NaBH4, Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd, >96%),
isopropanol (C3H8O, Aladdin reagent Co., Ltd, 99%), potassium
permanganate (KMnO4, Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd,
ꢁ99.5%), graphite power (Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd,
ꢁ99.85%), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2, Sinopharm Chemical Reagent
Co., Ltd, ꢁ30%), phosphoric acid (H3PO4, Sinopharm Chemical Re-
agent Co., Ltd, AR), sulfuric acid (H2SO4, Sinopharm Chemical Re-
agent Co., Ltd, 95e98%), sodium carbonate (Na2CO3, Sinopharm
Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd, >96%) were used without further puri-
fication. De-ionized water with the specific resistance of
dispersion. Then, 7 mL nickel chloride solution (0.01 mol Lꢀ1
)
and 3 mL chloroplatinic acid solution (0.01 mol Lꢀ1) was added into
the GO solution. A freshly prepared 10 mL NaBH4 solution (8 wt %)
was added into the above mixture under vigorous stirring at 25 ꢂC.
The resulted mixture was stirred for 20 min. The NiPt/rGO catalysts
were obtained by washing with water and centrifugation.
2.3. Catalyst characterization
Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements were performed
on D-MAX 2500/PC Powder X-ray diffractometer using Cu K
a
(l
¼ 0.15405 nm) radiation (40 kV, 40 mA). Transmission electron
18.2 MU$cm was obtained by reversed osmosis followed by ion-
exchange and filtration.
microscopy (TEM) images and high-resolution STEM measure-
ments were obtained using Tecnai G2 F30 S-Twin instrument with
a field emission gun operating at 200 kV. X-ray photoelectron
spectroscopy (XPS) measurement was performed with ESCALAB
250Xi spectrophotometer. Mass spectrometry (MS) analysis of the
generated gas was performed using an OmniStar GSD320 mass
spectrometer, wherein Ar was chosen as the carrying gas. The metal
contents of the catalyst were analyzed using inductively coupled
plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICPeAES) on Leeman PRO-
FILE SPEC.
2.2. Experimental
2.2.1. Graphene oxide (GO) preparation
GO was synthesized according to the reported procedure
[29,30]. Firstly, a 9:1 mixture of concentrated H2SO4/H3PO4
solution (180:20 mL) was added to the mixture of graphite
power (1.5 g) and KMnO4 (9 g) and then the solution was
kept at 323 K with a water bath for 12 h. The solution was
cooled to room temperature and poured into a flask con-
taining ice (200 g) and H2O2 (30%, 1.5 mL). The resultant so-
lution was centrifuged to obtain the product. The product was
washed by deionized water, 30% diluted hydrochloric acid and
absolute ethyl alcohol for many times and dried under vacuum
at 25 ꢂC.
2.4. Catalytic performance
An aqueous suspension (4 ml) containing the as-prepared
catalysts and NaOH was placed in a two-neck round-bottom
flask (30 mL), which was placed in a water bath under ambient
atmosphere. The reaction started when 0.1 mL of hydrazine
monohydrate was injected into the mixture using a syringe. A
gas burette filled with water was connected to the reaction flask
to measure the volume of released gas. The gas released during
the reaction was passed through a HCl solution (1.0 M) before
it was measured volumetrically. The molar ratios of metal/
N2H4$H2O were theoretically fixed at 0.005 for all the catalytic
reactions.
2.2.2. Syntheses of NiPtP/rGO nanocatalysts
In a typical experiment, 20 mg GO was dissolved in 25 mL
mixture of water and isopropyl alcohol (v:v ¼ 4:1). Ultra-
sonication was required to get a uniform dispersion. Then, 7 mL
nickel chloride solution (0.01 mol Lꢀ1) and 3 mL chloroplatinic
acid solution (0.01 mol Lꢀ1) was added into the GO solution.
The resulted mixture was stirred for 6 h. A 15 mL aqueous so-
lution of sodium hypophosphite (0.02 mol Lꢀ1) was slowly
dripped into the resulted mixture under vigorous stirring.
The pH of the mixture was adjusted to 10 by adding 0.5 M
2.5. Durability testing of the catalysts
For testing the durability of NiPt/rGO catalysts, 0.1 mL of hy-
drazine monohydrate was subsequently added into the reaction
flask after the completion of the first-run decomposition of
Na2CO3, subsequently heated to 80 ꢂC for
cooled in air. The NiPtP/rGO nanocatalysts were collected by
8 h, and then
Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the preparation of the NiPtP/rGO catalyst.