Controllable synthesis of multi-shelled NiCo2O4 hollow spheres catalytically for the thermal decomposition of ammonium perchlorate

Wenchao Zhang; Bin Jiang; Xiaohang Ma; Jiaxin Wang; Jiaqi Liu; Runhui Wu; Zilong Zheng; Jingping Liu; Kefeng Ma

doi:10.1039/c9ra03865e

Controllable synthesis of multi-shelled NiCo₂O₄ hollow spheres catalytically for the thermal decomposition of ammonium perchlorate

RSC Adv. 2019 Aug 5;9(41):23888-23893. doi: 10.1039/c9ra03865e. eCollection 2019 Jul 29.

Authors

Wenchao Zhang¹, Bin Jiang¹, Xiaohang Ma¹, Jiaxin Wang¹, Jiaqi Liu², Runhui Wu³, Zilong Zheng¹, Jingping Liu¹, Kefeng Ma⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology Nanjing 210094 China.
² The First Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation Beijing 100048 China.
³ National Key Laboratory on Science and Technology on Test Physics and Numerical Mathematics Beijing 100076 China.
⁴ School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology Nanjing 210094 China.

Abstract

The compatible catalytic structure of NiCo₂O₄ was modified into multi-shelled hollow spheres by one-pot synthesis, followed by heat treatment. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET) and N₂ adsorption-desorption approaches were used for the characterizations of nanoparticles and multi-shelled hollow porous structures and the morphologies and crystal structures of these hollow spheres, respectively. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was adopted for comparing the thermal decomposition performances of ammonium perchlorate (AP) catalyzed by adding different contents of multi-shelled NiCo₂O₄ hollow spheres. Impressively, the experimental results showed that the NiCo₂O₄ hollow spheres exhibited more excellent catalytic activity than NiCo₂O₄ nanoparticles as a result of their large specific surface areas, good adsorption capacity and many active reduction sites. The decomposition temperature of AP with multi-shelled NiCo₂O₄ hollow spheres could be reduced up to 322.3 °C from 416.3 °C. Furthermore, a catalytic mechanism was proposed for the thermal decomposition of AP over multi-shelled NiCo₂O₄ hollow spheres based on electron transfer processes.