Shape-selective fabrication of Cu nanostructures: Contrastive study of catalytic ability for hydrolytically releasing H2 from ammonia borane

Jun Zhang, Yang Wang, Yiming Zhu, Gang Mi, Xigang Du and Yana Dong

Renewable Energy, 2018, vol. 118, issue C, 146-151

Abstract: Ammonia borane, a promising hydrogen store material with the highest H capacity (19.6%), can controllably release H2 gas via suitable catalysis, which thus necessitates search for effective and inexpensive catalysts. We herein report a highly shape-selective fabrication strategy for Cu nanocrystals with the specially-designed nanostructures (nanocube, nanowire and nanotetrahedron, etc) via the same solution reduction route by simply adjusting addition proportion of the reductant and orientation agent. Contrastive studies of the Cu nanocrystals for catalytically hydrolyzing ammonia borane to release H2 amply demonstrate the obviously close correlativity between catalytic ability and the morphologies. In comparison to the ordinary Cu nanoparticles with extremely low or hardly any dehydrogenation activity, all of the regularly-shaped Cu nanocrystals hold the unexpectedly robust catalytic activity, in which the nano-cubed Cu nanocrystals possess the highest catalytic activity almost equivalent to some noble metals, followed by the nanotetrahedrons and nanowires. In theory, the well-designed shape tuning tactics could provide reference for fabricating highly active nano/micro catalysts concerning other metal systems.

Keywords: Cu nanostructures; Shape controlling; Catalytic hydrolysis; Ammonia borane (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148117310923
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:118:y:2018:i:c:p:146-151

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2017.10.114

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().