Ultrafine palladium nanoparticles supported on nitrogen-doped carbon microtubes as a high-performance organocatalyst

The development of active and stable metal-based catalysts are highly desired in chemical transformation. As is known, the catalytic activity and durability of supported catalyst are strongly dependent on the morphology of supporting material and the size distribution of metal nanoparticles (NPs). We report the fabrication of a high-performance nitrogen-doped carbon tubes@Pd (NCT@Pd) catalyst, in which well-dispersed ultrafine Pd NPs were deposited onto N-doped carbon microtubular support. Due to the synergy effect between the permeable mesoporous NCT shell and anchored ultrafine Pd NPs, the resultant NCT@Pd tubular catalyst shows remarkably high activity toward the reduction of 4-nitrophenol with a turnover frequency (TOF) of 29.5 min−1, even when the loading amount of active Pd NPs is as low as 0.324 wt%. Furthermore, NCT@Pd can also be applied for Suzuki coupling reaction with a TOF up to 44.0 min−1.

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