Knitting an oxygenated network-coat on carbon nanotubes from biomass and their applications in catalysis

In this work, we presented a new way for the functionalization of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with the use of biomass as starting materials and introduced a novel concept of knitting process in the chemistry of CNTs for the first time. A mixture of aromatic compounds obtained from the hydrothermal treatment of biomass, rather than the traditional polymer monomers, was used as the nanoscale building blocks to knit an oxygenated network-coat on the CNTs layer-by-layer. It is an effective, mild, green and easily-controlled method for the functionalization of CNTs. The obtained f-CNTs were proved to be a promising catalyst support for metal catalysts, such as Ru/f-CNTs, showed high activity and selectivity for the hydrogenation of citral to unsaturated alcohol. More importantly, we opened a pioneering way for the conversion of low-cost, abundant and renewable biomass into a hydrophilic/chemical reactive network-coat on the inert surface of a wide range of sp(2) carbon materials, such as prevalent fullerene, carbon nanotubes, carbon nanohorns and hot graphene etc.