Nanoporous Ru as highly efficient catalyst for hydrolysis of ammonia borane

•Nanoporous (NP) Ru is easily fabricated by dealloying RuAl alloy in mild acid medium.•NP–Ru has nanoscaled backbone and hollow channels with the ligament size at 10 nm.•NP–Ru exhibits high catalytic activity and long life time towards the AB hydrolysis.•NP–Ru shows superior structure stability and catalytic durability after five cycles.

We descried a mild route to the straightforward fabrication of nanoporous ruthenium (NP–Ru) by one−step mild etching of RuAl alloy. NP–Ru consisted of an interconnected nanoscaled ligaments with bicontinuous hollow channels extending in all three dimensions. The resulting NP–Ru shows high catalytic activity at room temperature and a long life time toward hydrolysis of ammonia borane (AB). It is also found that NP–Ru has superior reusability as well the recyclability with 67% of their initial catalytic activity retained even after five runs. Additionally, the activation energy of the hydrolysis of AB over NP–Ru was evaluated based on the kinetic studies depending on the reaction temperature. The effect of catalyst concentration was also explored on the reaction rate of hydrolysis of AB, indicating that the hydrolysis reaction is the first–order reaction with respect to the concentration of NP–Ru.