Facile route fabrication of nickel based mesoporous carbons with high catalytic performance towards 4-nitrophenol reduction

Novel nickel based mesoporous carbons are firstly in situ fabricated via pyrolysis of CTAB-chitosan-nickel supramolecular aggregates, which are pre-constructed by CTAB-directed self-assembly of 8-quinolinol modified chitosan and nickel acetate under basic conditions. This facile route fabrication method renders smart and homogeneously dispersed Ni nanoparticles (NPs) on the mesoporous carbonaceous framework without using any stabilizer and additional reductant, verified by high-energy X-ray diffraction, TEM, X-ray absorption fine structure, N-2 adsorption/desorption and Raman spectroscopy. Moreover, it is found that the morphology of Ni NPs, the textural property of carbonaceous supports, and the corresponding catalytic performance towards 4-nitrophenol reduction vary with the pyrolysis temperature. It is suggested that the nickel based mesoporous carbon pyrolyzed at 750 degrees C (Ni/MC-750) simultaneously possessing uniform spherical Ni NPs (24.5 nm) and bottle-neck mesopores exhibits the largest activity factor of 20.9 s(-1) g(-1) of any nickel catalysts.