N‐Doped Hierarchical Porous Carbon Embedded Synergistic Bimetallic CoCu NPs with Unparalleled Catalytic Performance

By virtue of the structural diversity, electronic tunability and synergetic effect, heterogeneous non-noble bimetallic catalysts have demonstrated excellent catalytic performance in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, biomass conversion and fine chemicals synthesis community. However, the feature of synergetic effect and formation mechanism of bimetallic CoCu NPs under carbothermal conditions still remain to be explored. Herein we report an efficient protocol for fabrication of a representative N-doped hierarchical porous carbon embedding bimetallic CoCu NPs catalyst. Particularly, the prepared Co0.7Cu0.3@ NHPC-800 catalyst demonstrates unprecedented catalytic activity and chemoselectivity for various nitroaromatics under extremely mild condition (1 atm H2, 30 degrees C), which is superior to the existing non-noble metal-based catalytic systems. It also exhibits excellent activity for hydrolysis of ammonia borane in pure water at room temperature. Furthermore, the possible formation process of bimetallic NPs is firstly brought to light, which could be the key to the nature of CoCu synergistic effect as well as the resultant high activity and selectivity.