Communications
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Scheme 1. Schematic illustration of the synthesis of CoCu@NHPC-T catalyst.
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matrix to further enhance their catalytic capacity. It is worth
noticing that some bimetallic CoCu NPs catalysts have been
diameter distribution ranging from ~12 nm to ~62 nm and are
well-dispersed inside the N-doped porous carbon frameworks.
To our surprise, an extraordinary phenomenon is brought to
light that the average size of Co Cu @NHPC-800 (27 nm)
catalyst is less than Co Cu @NHPC-700 (38 nm), indicating
0.7 0.3
there is a splitting and reconstruction process of Cu NPs
deriving from reduction of Co species (Figure S1). We infer that
[10]
successfully applied in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, hydrogena-
[
11]
[12]
tion of biomass-derived substances,
conversion,
electrocatalysis, CO
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0.7
0.3
[13]
[14]
as well as hydrolysis of ammonia borane.
Yasukawa et al. prepared N-doped carbon-supported Co/Cu
[15]
bimetallic NPs catalysts for aerobic oxidative of esterifications.
Feng et al. reported Cu Co O NPs anchored on graphene oxide
2
+
2+
Cu are firstly reduced to Cu NPs under 700°C, whereas Co
x
1-x
as a synergistic catalyst for efficient hydrolysis of ammonia
are further reduced to Co NPs and simultaneously inserted into
Cu NPs under 800°C, thus generating the well-dispersed and
relatively smaller CoCu NPs. Similar process was reported that
Cu NPs breaks up into small nanoclusters in the presence of CO
[16]
borane.
However, these catalysts are usually prepared by
deposition-reduction technique, thus easily suffer from poor
stability and weak interaction between metals.
[17]
From the above considerations, we attempt to design a
highly efficient and stable heterogeneous bimetallic CoCu NPs
catalyst through in-situ incorporating two non-noble metals
into the N-doped porous carbon framework, which resultantly
further reduces the activation energy barrier of nitroaromatics
hydrogenation, enabling it operated under extremely mild
conditions. In general, by self-assembling of two metal
phthalocyanine precursors with the commercially available
colloidal silica HS-40 followed by thermolysis and etching
combined strategy, the bimetallic nanocatalysts were easily
accessible. The performance of the as-prepared catalysts were
further optimized by adjusting the mass ratio of both metal
sources and pyrolysis temperature. The CoCu mass ratio of 7:3
was found to be optimal when calcining the precursor at 800°C
for 2 h. Kinetic experiments prove the apparent activation
energy of nitrobenzene hydrogenation is as low as 26.2 kJ/mol,
which is the minimum value among the reported non-noble
metal based catalysts. Moreover, the Co Cu @NHPC-800
gas or co-doped CuRu species.
Indeed, the inserted Co
constituent could not only redisperse Cu NPs but also prevent
the aggregation and agglomeration. To verify our hypothesis,
the control sample Cu@NHPC-800 was synthesized (Figure S2),
resulting in larger Cu NPs as expected (>40 nm), which
confirms the essential and unique role of the incorporated
cobalt component. High-angle annular dark field scanning
transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM) and EDS
mapping images of Co Cu @NHPC-800 further confirm that
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the C and N elements are homogeneously distributed in the
porous carbon framework, while the Co and Cu components
are well-surrounded by a plentiful of C and N atoms. Addition-
ally, TEM linear scan result shows that the nanocrystal consists
of uniformly distributed bimetallic CoCu NPs, which is
surrounded by abundant nitrogen species (Figure S3).
In Figure 2a, the XRD patterns of Co@NMC-800 and
Cu@NHPC-800 reveal that both Co and Cu species exist in the
form of metallic state, respectively. For prepared Co Cu @NHPC-
0
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0.3
x
y
catalyst also exhibits an impressive activity for hydrolysis of
ammonia borane (AB) under mild condition, which demon-
strates its potential application in convenient hydrogen storage
and release.
800 catalyst, no diffraction peak of CoOx and CuOx can be
detected, signifying that all of the CoCu constituents are
presented in metallic state in the bulk phase owing to the high
temperature reduction characteristic of the support. N sorption
2
In the present work, the Co, Cu-bimetallic embedded N-
doped hierarchical porous carbon was prepared through
thermal annealing of the physically assembled CoPcÀ CuPc and
measurements were carried out to investigate the surface area
and pore size distribution of the as-prepared catalysts (Fig-
ure 2c, 2d and Figure S4). The results indicate that all of
catalytic materials exhibit type-I and type-IV isotherms with
silica under flowing N atmosphere, followed by removal of the
2
SiO2 template in NaOH aqueous solution (as shown in
scheme 1). By adjusting CoCu mass ratio and pyrolysis temper-
ature, a series of Co Cu @NHPC-T catalysts were successfully
sharp uptakes at a relatively low N pressure (<0.1) and well-
2
defined hysteresis loops at higher N pressure (from 0.6 to 1.0),
2
illustrating the co-existence of micropores and mesopores. The
surface area and pore volume of the as-prepared samples are
x
y
obtained (where x=0~1, y=1~0, NHPC refers to nitrogen-
doped hierarchical porous carbon, T=700-1000°C).
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À 1
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À 1
ranging from 381 to 1848 m g and 0.97 to 3.51 cm g ,
suggesting the highly porous structure and more exposed
active sites. Notably, our previous work has proved that the
TEM images of Co Cu @NHPC-T (T=700–1000°C) in Fig-
0
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0.3
ure 1 show that the bimetallic CoCu NPs have a uniform
ChemCatChem 2019, 11, 1–9
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