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Nanocatalysts are likely to contain undetected single-atom components, which may have been ignored but have significant effect in catalytic reactions. Herein, we report a catalyst composed of Mo single atoms (SAs) and MoO2 nanoparticles (NPs) (MoSAs-MoO2@NC), which is an exact model to understand how the SAs contribute to the nanocatalyst. Both experimental results and the density functional theory calculations reveal that Mo SAs on nitrogen-doped carbon provides the reaction zone for nitro reduction, while MoO2 is the active site for decomposing hydrazine hydrate to produce H*. Thanks to the synergy between Mo SAs and MoO2 NPs, this catalyst exhibits noble metal-like catalytic activity (100% conversion at 4 min) for the dechlorination-proof transfer hydrogenation. Additionally, the hydrogen migration on the catalyst is verified by the electrochemical tests in the absence of a hydrogen source. This work provides a model for further study on the coexistence of single atoms in nanoparticle catalysts.

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Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 27 October 2022
Accepted: 28 October 2022
Published: 27 October 2022
Issue date: February 2023

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2022

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Nos. 2021YFA1502802 and 2020YFA0406101), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21961160722, 21872020, 22072162, 91845201, and 21701168), the Liaoning Revitalization Talents Program XLYC1907055, Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (No. 2021-MS-001), Dalian National Lab for Clean Energy (DNL Cooperation Fund 202001), and Dalian high level talent innovation project (No. 2019RQ063). We gratefully acknowledge 07A1 beamline of Taiwan Light Source (TLS) of the “National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center” (NSRRC), China for providing the beam time.

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