Donut Assembly of Nanoparticles with High Catalytic Efficiency for Hydrogen Gas Generation from Ammonia Borane

Abstract

Polymer‐supported transition metal nano particles usually exhibited low catalytic efficiency due to the long diffusion length for the reactants to reach the catalytic center. Herein, we used cyclic polymers to construct donut‐like assembly with two cyclic macromolecules sandwiching a layer of metal NPs. Doping Rh into the nano particles led to extremely active catalysts for ammonia borane decomposition with a high TOF of 780 min−1. We attributed the high efficiency to the reduced diffusion length in this special assembly. Light‐promoted effect was also demonstrated with TOF further elevated to 980 min−1. The modular nature of this design also permitted subsequent structural modification to achieve high stability with TON reaching over 2×106.

Plasmonic nanocatalysts for visible-NIR light induced hydrogen generation from storage materials

“…Liu et al studied the use of polymer to encapsulate metal NPs for efficient methanolysis of AB as shown in equation (5). 71 In this study, Au-Rh NPs were encapsulated in cyclic polysiloxanes (CP) hosts with donut-like assembly for efficient catalysis under visible light irradiation. The cyclic shape enables the reduced diffusion length of the assembly and was further modified with 6-mercapto-1-hexanol to stabilise metal NPs through thiol-metal interaction, which was labelled as CP1.…”