Facile synthesis of a hollow Ni-Fe-B nanochain and its enhanced catalytic activity for hydrogen generation from NaBH4 hydrolysis

Jie Guo; Yongjiang Hou; Bo Li

doi:10.1039/c8ra03848a

Facile synthesis of a hollow Ni-Fe-B nanochain and its enhanced catalytic activity for hydrogen generation from NaBH₄ hydrolysis

RSC Adv. 2018 Jul 19;8(46):25873-25880. doi: 10.1039/c8ra03848a.

Authors

Jie Guo¹, Yongjiang Hou¹, Bo Li¹

Affiliation

¹ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Science and Technology Shi Jiazhuang 050018 China houyongjiang122@163.com.

Abstract

A hollow Ni-Fe-B nanochain is successfully synthesized by a galvanic replacement method using a Fe-B nanocomposite and a NiCl₂ solution as the template and additional reagent, respectively. Both the concentration of Ni and the morphology of the resulting Ni-Fe-B alloy are controlled by varying the duration of the replacement process during the synthesis. The Ni-Fe-B sample synthesized for 60 min (Ni-Fe-B-60) shows the best catalytic activity at 313 K, with a hydrogen production rate of 4320 mL min^-1 g_cat ^-1 and an activation energy for the NaBH₄ hydrolysis reaction of 33.7 kJ mol^-1. The good performance of Ni-Fe-B-60 towards the hydrolysis of NaBH₄ can be ascribed to both hollow nanochain structural and electronic effects. Furthermore, the effects of temperature, catalyst amount, and concentration of NaOH and NaBH₄ on the hydrolysis process are systematically studied, and an overall kinetic rate equation is obtained. The hollow Ni-Fe-B nanochain catalyst also shows good reusability characteristics and maintained its initial activity after 5 consecutive cycles.