The need for nontoxic, cheap, earth-abundant catalysts, which can be sustainably produced and implemented, is essential to many processes. In this work we present unsupported iron nanoparticles as an efficient catalyst for selective acetylene hydrogenation under industrially relevant front-end conditions. Additionally, the selectivity and the activity of this catalyst can be easily moderated by the addition of carbon monoxide. The iron nanoparticles were prepared in an environment completely free of water or air using condensed ammonia at −78 °C. State of the art X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy were used to determine the crystal structure, morphology, and purity. The catalyst showed stable performance over several experiments and, other than an agglomeration of the unsupported and unstabilized particles, no changes to the catalyst were detected before and after the reactions.
The use of low-temperature solution synthesis followed by a brief annealing step allows metastable single-phase Co3B nanoparticles to be obtained, with sizes ranging from 11 nm to 22 nm. The particles are ferromagnetic with a saturation magnetization of 91 A m 2 kg-1 (corresponding to 1.02 μB/Co) and a coercive field of 0.14 T at 5 K, retaining the semi-hard magnetic properties of bulk Co3B. They display a magnetic blocking temperature of 695 K and a Curie temperature near 710 K, but the measurement of these high-temperature properties was complicated by decomposition of the particles at these high temperatures. Additionally, the nanoparticles of Co3B were investigated as an electrocatalyst in the oxygen evolution reaction and showed a low onset potential of 1.55 V vs. RHE. XPS measurements were performed before and after the electrocatalytic measurements to study the surface of the catalyst, to pinpoint what appear to be the active surface species.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.