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Atomic non-noble metal materials show the potential to substitute noble metals in catalysis. Herein, melamine formaldehyde resin is developed to synthesize atomic iron on mesoporous nitrogen-doped carbon. The triazine units with abundant nitrogen content and cavity can realize effectively anchoring of single metal atoms. The atomic iron with unique charge and coordination characteristics shows superior catalytic performance in dehydrogenation reaction. Various N-heterocycles compounds and amines can be efficiently dehydrogenated into the corresponding products at room temperature, which is the mildest of all reported reaction conditions even when noble metal catalysts are considered. Therefore, development of atomic non-noble metal catalysts with mesoporous structure may provide an effective way to realize the substitution for noble metals in heterogeneous catalysis.


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Atomic iron on mesoporous N-doped carbon to achieve dehydrogenation reaction at room temperature

Show Author's information Zheng Chen1,§( )Wenjuan Yang2,§Yue Wu3Chao Zhang3Jun Luo4Chen Chen3Yadong Li3
Key Laboratory of Functional Molecular Solids, Ministry of Education, Anhui Key Laboratory of Molecule-Based Materials, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China
International Collaborative Laboratory of 2D Materials for Optoelectronics Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, Institute of Microscale Optoelectronics, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Center for Electron Microscopy, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384, China

§ Zheng Chen and Wenjuan Yang contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

Atomic non-noble metal materials show the potential to substitute noble metals in catalysis. Herein, melamine formaldehyde resin is developed to synthesize atomic iron on mesoporous nitrogen-doped carbon. The triazine units with abundant nitrogen content and cavity can realize effectively anchoring of single metal atoms. The atomic iron with unique charge and coordination characteristics shows superior catalytic performance in dehydrogenation reaction. Various N-heterocycles compounds and amines can be efficiently dehydrogenated into the corresponding products at room temperature, which is the mildest of all reported reaction conditions even when noble metal catalysts are considered. Therefore, development of atomic non-noble metal catalysts with mesoporous structure may provide an effective way to realize the substitution for noble metals in heterogeneous catalysis.

Keywords: nitrogen-doped carbon, mesoporous structure, non-noble metal, dehydrogenation, atomic dispersion

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Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 28 April 2020
Revised: 01 June 2020
Accepted: 06 July 2020
Published: 11 August 2020
Issue date: November 2020

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21901007 and 21866032), and we acknowledge the BL12B beamline of National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) in Hefei and 1W1B station of Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility (BSRF). Our work is completed on the "Explorer 100" cluster system of Tsinghua HPC Platform.

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