Atomic Layer Deposition of Ruthenium Nanoparticles on Electrospun Carbon Nanofibers: A Highly Efficient Nanocatalyst for the Hydrolytic Dehydrogenation of Methylamine Borane

Mohammad Aref Khalily; Mehmet Yurderi; Ali Haider; Ahmet Bulut; Bhushan Patil; Mehmet Zahmakiran; Tamer Uyar

doi:10.1021/acsami.8b04822

Atomic Layer Deposition of Ruthenium Nanoparticles on Electrospun Carbon Nanofibers: A Highly Efficient Nanocatalyst for the Hydrolytic Dehydrogenation of Methylamine Borane

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2018 Aug 8;10(31):26162-26169. doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b04822. Epub 2018 Jul 24.

Authors

Mohammad Aref Khalily¹, Mehmet Yurderi², Ali Haider¹, Ahmet Bulut², Bhushan Patil¹, Mehmet Zahmakiran², Tamer Uyar¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, National Nanotechnology Research Center (UNAM) , Bilkent University , Ankara 06800 , Turkey.
² Department of Chemistry, Science Faculty , Yuzuncu Yıl University , 65080 Van , Turkey.

PMID: 29989394
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b04822

Abstract

We report the fabrication of a novel and highly active nanocatalyst system comprising electrospun carbon nanofiber (CNF)-supported ruthenium nanoparticles (NPs) (Ru@CNF), which can reproducibly be prepared by the ozone-assisted atomic layer deposition (ALD) of Ru NPs on electrospun CNFs. Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) was electropsun into bead-free one-dimensional (1D) nanofibers by electrospinning. The electrospun PAN nanofibers were converted into well-defined 1D CNFs by a two-step carbonization process. We took advantage of an ozone-assisted ALD technique to uniformly decorate the CNF support by highly monodisperse Ru NPs of 3.4 ± 0.4 nm size. The Ru@CNF nanocatalyst system catalyzes the hydrolytic dehydrogenation of methylamine borane (CH₃NH₂BH₃), which has been considered as one of the attractive materials for the efficient chemical hydrogen storage, with a record turnover frequency of 563 mol H₂/mol Ru × min and an excellent conversion (>99%) under air at room temperature with the activation energy ( E_a) of 30.1 kJ/mol. Moreover, Ru@CNF demonstrated remarkable reusability performance and conserved 72% of its inherent catalytic activity even at the fifth recycle.

Keywords: ammonia borane; atomic layer deposition; carbon nanofibers; catalysis; electrospinning; hydrogen generation; methylamine borane; ruthenium nanoparticles.