Monodisperse PtCu alloy nanoparticles as highly efficient catalysts for the hydrolytic dehydrogenation of ammonia borane

Pt-M alloy nanoparticles (NPs) with well-defined size and compositions exhibit dramatically catalytic performance in chemical reactions. In this work, monodisperse PtCu NPs with controlled size and compositions were synthesized by the co-reduction method in the presence of oleylamine. These NPs have excellent catalytic activities in the hydrolytic dehydrogenation of ammonia borane (AB) and their activities were composition dependent. Among the different-composition PtCu NPs, the Cu50Pt50 NPs exhibit the highest catalytic activity with an initial turnover frequency of 102.5 mol(hydrogen)·mol(catalyst)−1·min−1 and an apparent activation energy of 36 kJ·mol−1, which demonstrate the validity of partly replacing Pt by a first-row transition metal on constructing high performance heterogeneous nanocatalysts for the hydrolytic dehydrogenation of AB.