A One-Stone-Two-Birds Strategy to Functionalized Carbon Nanocages

Kuncan Wang; Shangheng Liu; Juntao Zhang; Zhiwei Hu; Qingyu Kong; Yong Xu; Xiaoqing Huang

doi:10.1021/acsnano.2c06137

A One-Stone-Two-Birds Strategy to Functionalized Carbon Nanocages

ACS Nano. 2022 Sep 27;16(9):15008-15015. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.2c06137. Epub 2022 Sep 1.

Authors

Kuncan Wang¹, Shangheng Liu¹, Juntao Zhang¹, Zhiwei Hu², Qingyu Kong^{3

4}, Yong Xu⁵, Xiaoqing Huang¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China.
² Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Nothnitzer Strasse 40, Dresden 01187, Germany.
³ Société Civile Synchrotron SOLEIL, L'Orme des Merisiers, Saint-Aubin─BP 48, 91192, GIF-sur-Yvette Cedex, France.
⁴ School of Physics Science and Information Engineering, Liaocheng University, Shandong Key Laboratory of Optical Communication Science and Technology, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng, 252059, China.
⁵ Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Materials and Energy Storage Devices, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Energy Materials, School of Materials and Energy, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, China.

PMID: 36048504
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.2c06137

Abstract

Carbon nanocages (CNCs) have attracted tremendous interest in heterogeneous catalysis due to their promising properties of porous structure and improved mass transfer. Nevertheless, the controlled synthesis of CNCs remains a great challenge. Herein, we have shown the successful construction of functionalized N-doped CNCs (NCNCs) via a one-stone-two-birds strategy. The selective use of hexacarbonyl molybdenum (Mo(CO)₆) can not only protect the profile of the ZIF-8 precursor from collapse during thermal treatment but also be sacrificed for the functionalization of NCNCs after pyrolysis. Detailed mechanism studies reveal that Mo(CO)₆ evolves into MoO₃ on the surface of ZIF-8 and then facilitates the rapid pyrolysis of ZIF-8, leading to the formation of NCNCs decorated with small-sized MoC nanoparticles (MoC/NCNCs). The versatility of this one-stone-two-birds strategy has been validated by the generations of Cr- and W-decorated NCNCs. Moreover, MoC/NCNCs can serve as a selective and stable catalyst for furfural hydrogenation. This work provides a facile and universal strategy for fabricating and functionalizing CNCs, which attracts research interest in the fields of chemistry, material science, catalysis, and beyond.

Keywords: MoC; carbon nanocages; furfural hydrogenation; metal−organic frameworks; surface decoration.