Novel hollow microsphere with porous carbon shell embedded with Cu/Co bimetal nanoparticles: Facile large-scale preparation and catalytic hydrogenation performance

• Simultaneous formation between carbon carrier and Cu/Co nanocatalysts is realized. • The Cu/Co bimetal NPs display temperature dependent interlocking microstructures. • The carbon supported non-noble catalysts show excellent catalytic activity of 4-NP. • The route of spray drying-calcination holds great potential for mass-production. • The obtained supported non-noble catalysts possess magnetic separation property. Non-noble bimetals have attracted extensive attention for their natural aboundance and low cost, but it remains a big challenge to design and synthesize novel supported non-noble bimetal nanocatalyst in a controllable and high-efficient manner. Herein, a novel hollow spherical supported non-noble bimetal nanocatalyst with porous carbon shell as the continuous matrix and Cu/Co bimetal nanoparticles as the dispersion phase is successfully fabricated by a convenient strategy involving spray drying and subsequent heat treatment. The morphology and microstructure depend catalyst activity of the hollow spherical supported catalyst has been studied systematically. It is found that the heating temperature plays a critical role in determining the microstructure and catalytic performance of the products. With an optimal heating temperature of 600 °C, the corresponding product exhibits the highest normalized reaction rate constant ( k n ) of 25.4 s −1 g −1 for catalytic reduction of 4-notrophenol, which can be attributed to the suitable synergism of the well-defined bimetal structure, combined effect of the two metallic phases and the metal-support interaction. This work provides an additional strategy for the simultaneous formation of both the support and the active loading phase of supported non-noble bimetal nanocatalyst, and may shed some light on the high-efficiency synthesis of other supported heterostructure with various compositions and properties.