The influence of encapsulated cobalt content within N-doped bamboo-like carbon nanotubes catalysts for arylalkanes oxidation

In this manuscript, the Co@CNTs catalysts were prepared via a facile strategy that encapsulated metallic cobalt within unique bamboo-like carbon nanotubes. By tuning the content of the encapsulated metal, the physicochemical properties of the carbon nanotubes can be effectively optimized. Techniques such as TEM, BET, XRD, Raman, and XPS were employed to characterize the as-prepared catalysts. It could be found that the metal particles promoted the formation of bamboo-like carbon nanotubes. Moreover, the correlation between the encapsulated cobalt content and catalytic activity have also been explored and the optimal catalyst exhibited excellent catalytic performance for selective oxidation of hydrocarbons under molecular oxygen and solvent-free conditions, especially for ethylbenzene, the conversion was up to 71.5% with 93.4% of selectivity for acetophenone. Such a high catalytic activity was attributed to the synergistic interaction between the uniformly incorporated N atoms in the unique bamboo-like carbon nanotubes and the encapsulated metallic cobalt.