Stratified nanoporous PtTi alloys for hydrolysis of ammonia borane

Stratified nanoporous PtTi (SNP-PtTi) alloys with bimodal size distributions and different components are successfully prepared by selectively dissolving Al atoms followed by removing part of Ti atoms from the PtTiAl precursor alloy. The as-made PtTi alloys have stratified nanoporous architecture with the first order ligaments around 50 nm and the second order smaller ligaments around 6 nm. The SNP-PtTi alloys with different bimetallic ratios exhibit much higher catalytic activity for the hydrolysis of ammonia borane than NP-Pt catalyst. The SNP-Pt65Ti35 alloy shows superior specific activity toward the hydrolytic dehydrogenation of ammonia borane compared with SNP-Pt50Ti50 and -Pt80Ti20, showing an initial turnover frequency of 51.4 mol H2 (mol Pt)−1 min−1. The activation energy of SNP-Pt65Ti35 was estimated to be about 39.4 kJ mol−1, which was small compared with most of the reported activation energy values in the literature. In addition, the recyclability tests indicate that the SNP-Pt65Ti35 retained 63% of the initial catalytic activity after the fifth run of hydrolysis. The lifetime of SNP-Pt65Ti35 was measured as 16,380 turnovers over 100 h in the hydrolysis of ammonia borane before deactivation. The SNP-PtTi alloys show potential application prospect in the field of online hydrogen production due to the high catalytic performance and the facile preparation.

Graphical abstractStratified nanoporous PtTi (SNP-PtTi) alloys with different bimetallic ratios are successfully fabricated by first selectively dissolving Al atoms followed by removing part of Ti atoms from the PtTiAl precursor alloy. The as-prepared SNP-PtTi alloys consist of interconnected bimodal nanoporous architecture with two order pore/ligament distributions and interconnected hollow channels extending in all three dimensions. Compared with NP-Pt catalyst, SNP-PtTi alloys show superior catalytic activities toward AB hydrolysis reaction in virtue of the perfect combination of unique stratified nanoporous architecture and alloying effect.Download high-res image (112KB)Download full-size image