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Research Article

Cobalt single atom site catalysts with ultrahigh metal loading for enhanced aerobic oxidation of ethylbenzene

Yu Xiong1,2,§, Wenming Sun3,§, Yunhu Han4,§, Pingyu Xin2, Xusheng Zheng5, Wensheng Yan5, Juncai Dong6, Jian Zhang2, Dingsheng Wang2( ), Yadong Li2
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
China College of Science, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
Institute of Flexible Electronics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230029, China
Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100084, China

§ Yu Xiong, Wenming Sun, and Yunhu Han contributed equally to this work.

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Abstract

The oxidation of hydrocarbons to produce high value-added compounds (ketones or alcohols) using oxygen in air as the only oxidant is an efficient synthetic strategy from both environmental and economic views. Herein, we successfully synthesized cobalt single atom site catalysts (Co SACs) with high metal loading of 23.58 wt.% supported on carbon nitride (CN), which showed excellent catalytic properties for oxidation of ethylbenzene in air. Moreover, Co SACs show a much higher turn-over frequency (19.6 h-1) than other reported non-noble catalysts under the same condition. Comparatively, the as-obtained nanosized or homogenous Co catalysts are inert to this reaction. Co SACs also exhibit high selectivity (97%) and stability (unchanged after five runs) in this reaction. DFT calculations reveal that Co SACs show a low energy barrier in the first elementary step and a high resistance to water, which result in the robust catalytic performance for this reaction.

Keywords

single atom sitehigh-loading catalystsheterogeneous catalystsethylbenzene oxidation

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Nano Research
Volume 14 Issue 7,
July 2021
Pages 2418-2423
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-020-3244-4
Cite this article:
Xiong Y, Sun W, Han Y, et al. Cobalt single atom site catalysts with ultrahigh metal loading for enhanced aerobic oxidation of ethylbenzene. Nano Research, 2021, 14(7): 2418-2423. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3244-4
Topics:
Carbon nitrideCatalytic oxidation NanocatalystsOxidation
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Received: 04 October 2020
Revised: 10 November 2020
Accepted: 13 November 2020
Published: 05 July 2021
© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
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