6. Low-temperature CO oxidation is increasingly important in relation to cleaning air and lowering automotive emissions. Metal-oxide-supported Au nanoparticle (NP) catalysts are commonly used for CO oxidation. The key to effective CO oxidation is the design of catalysts featuring high porosity and strong metal-support interactions. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with high surface areas offer a potential platform for the design of promising catalysts, but their inorganic nodes are partitioned by organic ligands and show weak interaction with the guest metal NPs. Here, we demonstrate a general strategy for the fabrication of a “quasi-MOF” to realize both a porous structure and a strong interaction with a synergetic effect between the immobilized metal NPs and the inorganic nodes. The metal NP/quasi-MOF composite exhibits high catalytic activity in low-temperature CO oxidation. This work has been published on Chem, 2018, 4, 845.
5. Small metal nanoclusters often display high catalytic activity, but also low stability due to aggregation. Here, Xu and co-workers show that subnanometre Pd clusters can be contained within porous organic cages. Not only do the particles retain high catalytic activity, they also show excellent solubility and stability. This work has been published on Nat. Catal., 2018, 1, 214-220.
4. The thermal transformation of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) generates a variety of nanostructured materials, including carbon-based materials, metal oxides, metal chalcogenides, metal phosphides and metal carbides. These derivatives of MOFs have characteristics such as high surface areas, permanent porosities and controllable functionalities that enable their good performance in sensing, gas storage, catalysis and energy-related applications. Although progress has been made to tune the morphologies of MOF-derived structures at the nanometre scale, it remains crucial to further our knowledge of the relationship between morphology and performance. Recently, we summarize the synthetic strategies and optimized methods that enable control over the size, morphology, composition and structure of the derived nanomaterials. In addition, we compare the performance of materials prepared by the MOF-templated strategy and other synthetic methods. Our aim is to reveal the relationship between the morphology and the physico-chemical properties of MOF-derived nanostructures to optimize their performance for applications such as sensing, catalysis, and energy storage and conversion. This work has been published on Nat. Rev. Mater., 2017, 17075.
3. Emerging as a new family of hybrid crystalline materials, bimetallic porous metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have received great attention in gas storage and separation. Recently, we present the first perspective on the construction of bimetallic MOFs, involving one-step synthesis and postsynthetic modification, and their applications in gas storage and separation. We hope that the present perspective will inspire chemists working in this area to rationally design/develop new bimetallic MOFs for advanced applications. This work has been published on Cryst. Growth Des., 2017, 17 (4), pp 1450–1455.
2. Highly dispersed palladium nanoclusters (Pd NCs) immobilized by a nitrogen (N)-functionalized porous carbon support (N-MSC-30) are synthesized by a wet chemical reduction method, wherein the N-MSC-30 prepared by a tandem low-temperature heat-treatment approach proved to be a distinct support for stabilizing the Pd NCs. The prepared Pd/N-MSC-30 shows extremely high catalytic activity and recyclability for the dehydrogenation of formic acid (FA), affording the highest turnover frequency (TOF = 8414 h–1) at 333 K, which is much higher than that of the Pd catalyst supported on the N-MSC-30 prepared via a one-step process. This tandem heat-treatment strategy provides a facile and effective synthetic methodology to immobilize ultrafine metal NPs on N-functionalized carbon materials, which have tremendous application prospects in various catalytic fields. This work has been published on ACS Catal., 2017, 7, 2720.
1. Formic acid (FA), as a promising hydrogen carrier, has been extensively studied in recent years. Recently, we have prepared the AuPd/rGO nanocatalysts by a facile non-noble metal sacrifice approach (NNMSA). The Co3(BO3)2 co-precipitated with AuPd NPs and subsequently sacrificed by acid etching effectively prevents the primary AuPd NPs from aggregation. The resulted AuPd NPs exhibit the highest activity (turnover frequency, 4840 h-1) among all the heterogeneous catalysts for the dehydrogenation of formic acid to generate hydrogen without CO impurity. We believe that the way for the utilization of FA as a hydrogen carrier will be paved by the practical use of present catalyst. This work has been published on Chem. Commun., 2016, 52, 4171.