Generating highly dispersed metal NPs of the desired size on surfaces such as porous silica is challenging due to wettability issues. Here, we report highly active and well-dispersed Pd incorporated mesoporous MCM-41 (Pd@MCM) using a facile impregnation via a molecular approach based on hydrogen bonding interaction of a palladium β-diketone complex with surface silanol groups of mesoporous silica. Controlled thermal treatment of so obtained materials in air, argon, and hydrogen provided the catalysts characterized by electron microscopy, nitrogen physisorption, X-ray diffraction and spectroscopy. Gratifyingly, our catalyst provided the lowest ever activation energy (14.3 kJ/mol) reported in literature for dehydrogenation of NaBH4 . Moreover, the rate constant (7×10-3 s-1 ) for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol outperformed the activity of commercial Pd/C (4×10-3 s-1 ) and Pd/Al2 O3 (5×10-3 s-1 ) catalysts.
Keywords: catalytic dehydrogenation; heterogeneous catalysis; mesoporous silica; nitroarene reduction; supported catalysts.
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