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Nano Research 2023, 16(10): 12076-12083 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5113-9
Research Article | Issue | Published: 29 November 2022

Stable Au nanoparticles confined in boron nitride shells for optimizing oxidative desulfurization

Show Author's Information Linjie Lu1,2,  Jing He1,  Peiwen Wu1( ),  Yang Sun1,  Mingqing Hua1,  Peng Cui1,  Wenshuai Zhu1,2( ),  Huaming Li1,  Zhichang Liu2,  Chunming Xu2
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
College of Chemical Engineering and Environment, State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing 102249, China
Keywords:
boron nitride, core–shell, confinement effect, oxidative desulfurization, Au nanocatalyst
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Nanocatalysts
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Lu L, He J, Wu P, et al. Stable Au nanoparticles confined in boron nitride shells for optimizing oxidative desulfurization. Nano Research, 2023, 16(10): 12076-12083. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5113-9
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Supported gold (Au) nanocatalysts have long played an important role in numerous heterogeneous catalysis. However, the dominant difficulty of poor thermodynamic stability hampers its practical application. Herein, a core–shell structured Au nanocatalyst with Au nanoparticles (NPs) confined in boron nitride (BN) shells is proposed for enhanced thermodynamic stability. The two-dimensional porous structure of BN not only functions as a physical separator for the sintering resistance of Au NPs, but also provides a microchannel for catalytic reaction substrates. Besides, owing to the confinement effect, a strengthened interaction between well-designed Au NPs and the BN can be expected, which further boosts the stability and catalytic activity. Detailed experiments show that a proper BN shell thickness is important to maintain the balance between the sintering resistance and catalytic activity. A significantly boosted performance of 97.2% conversion in oxidative desulfurization (ODS) was obtained with a proper number of BN coating layers, outperforming the one with a thicker BN shell. Moreover, the recyclability of the prepared catalyst was investigated with no obvious decrease in catalytic performance after 10 runs, greatly higher than that without a BN shell, suggesting excellent durability.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Stable Au nanoparticles confined in boron nitride shells for optimizing oxidative desulfurization

Show Author's information Linjie Lu1,2, Jing He1, Peiwen Wu1( ), Yang Sun1, Mingqing Hua1, Peng Cui1, Wenshuai Zhu1,2( ), Huaming Li1, Zhichang Liu2, Chunming Xu2
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
College of Chemical Engineering and Environment, State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing 102249, China

Abstract

Supported gold (Au) nanocatalysts have long played an important role in numerous heterogeneous catalysis. However, the dominant difficulty of poor thermodynamic stability hampers its practical application. Herein, a core–shell structured Au nanocatalyst with Au nanoparticles (NPs) confined in boron nitride (BN) shells is proposed for enhanced thermodynamic stability. The two-dimensional porous structure of BN not only functions as a physical separator for the sintering resistance of Au NPs, but also provides a microchannel for catalytic reaction substrates. Besides, owing to the confinement effect, a strengthened interaction between well-designed Au NPs and the BN can be expected, which further boosts the stability and catalytic activity. Detailed experiments show that a proper BN shell thickness is important to maintain the balance between the sintering resistance and catalytic activity. A significantly boosted performance of 97.2% conversion in oxidative desulfurization (ODS) was obtained with a proper number of BN coating layers, outperforming the one with a thicker BN shell. Moreover, the recyclability of the prepared catalyst was investigated with no obvious decrease in catalytic performance after 10 runs, greatly higher than that without a BN shell, suggesting excellent durability.

Keywords: boron nitride, core–shell, confinement effect, oxidative desulfurization, Au nanocatalyst

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 10 June 2022
Revised: 07 September 2022
Accepted: 29 September 2022
Published: 29 November 2022
Issue date: October 2023

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2022

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

We thank the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 22178154 and 22008094), Science Foundation of China University of Petroleum (Beijing) (No. ZX20220044), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20190852), and the Natural Science Foundation for Jiangsu Colleges and Universities (No. 19KJB530005).

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