Nickel and oxygen-containing functional groups co-decorated graphene-like shells as catalytic sites with excellent selective hydrogenation activity and robust stability

Encapsulation of metal nanoparticles is one of the promising strategies to overcome the instability of supported metal catalysts. However, improving the hydrogenation activity of multilayer graphene-like encapsulation remains a critical challenge. To address this issue, multilayer graphene-like shells (MGSs) doped with oxygen-containing functional groups (OFGs) encapsulated Ni nanoparticles catalysts (Ni@OC) were synthesized via calcining the calcination of Ni-based metal-organic framework. The Ni@OC catalysts exhibited 100 % nitroaromatics conversion, excellent product selectivity, and superior stability in harsh conditions. Experimental results indicate that the dissociation of H2 and the activation of nitrobenzene compounds can be achieved with the OFGs doped MGSs as the catalytic site in Ni@OC catalysts. In addition, OFGs promote the electron transfer from Ni core to graphene-like shells and result in structural defects of the MGSs to adsorb hydrogenation substrates. Thus, a reasonable design concept was provided to improve the hydrogenation activity of MGSs encapsulated catalysts with the stable existence of metal.