Mesoporous Metal-Metalloid Amorphous Alloys: The First Synthesis of Open 3D Mesoporous Ni-B Amorphous Alloy Spheres via a Dual Chemical Reduction Method

Yunqing Kang; Joel Henzie; Huajun Gu; Jongbeom Na; Amanullah Fatehmulla; Belqes Saeed A Shamsan; Abdullah M Aldhafiri; W Aslam Farooq; Yoshio Bando; Toru Asahi; Bo Jiang; Hexing Li; Yusuke Yamauchi

doi:10.1002/smll.201906707

Mesoporous Metal-Metalloid Amorphous Alloys: The First Synthesis of Open 3D Mesoporous Ni-B Amorphous Alloy Spheres via a Dual Chemical Reduction Method

Small. 2020 Mar;16(10):e1906707. doi: 10.1002/smll.201906707. Epub 2020 Feb 5.

Authors

Yunqing Kang^{1

2

3}, Joel Henzie², Huajun Gu¹, Jongbeom Na^{2

4}, Amanullah Fatehmulla⁵, Belqes Saeed A Shamsan⁵, Abdullah M Aldhafiri⁵, W Aslam Farooq⁵, Yoshio Bando^{2

6

7}, Toru Asahi³, Bo Jiang², Hexing Li^{1

8}, Yusuke Yamauchi^{2

4

9}

Affiliations

¹ The Education Ministry Key Lab of Resource Chemistry and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Functional Materials, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200234, China.
² International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0044, Japan.
³ Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 169-8555, Japan.
⁴ School of Chemical Engineering and Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia.
⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Science, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2455, 11451, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ Institute of Molecular Plus, Tianjin University, No. 11 Building, No. 92 Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin, 300072, P. R. China.
⁷ Australian Institute for Innovative Materials (AIIM), University of Wollongong, Squires Way, North Wollongong, NSW, 2500, Australia.
⁸ Shanghai University of Electric Power, Shanghai, 200062, China.
⁹ Department of Plant & Environmental New Resources, Kyung Hee University, 1732 Deogyeong-daero, Giheung-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, 446-701, Republic of Korea.

PMID: 32022431
DOI: 10.1002/smll.201906707

Abstract

Selective hydrogenation of nitriles is an industrially relevant synthetic route for the preparation of primary amines. Amorphous metal-boron alloys have a tunable, glass-like structure that generates a high concentration of unsaturated metal surface atoms that serve as active sites in hydrogenation reactions. Here, a method to create nanoparticles composed of mesoporous 3D networks of amorphous nickel-boron (Ni-B) alloy is reported. The hydrogenation of benzyl cyanide to β-phenylethylamine is used as a model reaction to assess catalytic performance. The mesoporous Ni-B alloy spheres have a turnover frequency value of 11.6 h^-1 , which outperforms non-porous Ni-B spheres with the same composition. The bottom-up synthesis of mesoporous transition metal-metalloid alloys expands the possible reactions that these metal architectures can perform while simultaneously incorporating more Earth-abundant catalysts.

Keywords: 3D materials; amorphous alloys; mesoporous metal alloys; metal-boron alloys; nanoarchitectures.

Abstract

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