Bimetallic palladium-cobalt nanomaterials as highly efficient catalysts for dehydrocoupling of dimethylamine borane

Abstract

In this work, we report the synthesis, characterization and application of graphene oxide stabilized PdCo nanoparticles (PdCo@GO) for the dehydrocoupling of dimethylamine borane (DMAB) as a model reaction. Bimetallic graphene oxide stabilized PdCo nanoparticles were readily synthesized using an ultrasonic reduction technique, in which both metals of Pd and Co were reduced with GO. The dispersion of PdCo nanoparticles on the surface of GO was enhanced with the help of the ultrasonic reduction method which result in the enhancing of dispersion of both metals without any agglomeration problem. The characterization studies revealed that graphene oxide stabilized PdCo nanoparticles have a uniform, homogeneous distribution on graphene oxide and an average particle size of 3.48 ± 0.22 nm. After fully characterization of graphene oxide stabilized PdCo nanoparticles, they have been tried in model reaction as a catalyst and exhibited a high catalytic performance compared the previous catalysts in literature with a TOF value of 226.80 h−1. The investigation of kinetic parameters showed that graphene oxide stabilized PdCo nanoparticles have very high negative entropy (ΔS: −170.85 J mol−1 K−1) value and a low activation energy value (Ea: 17.53 ± 2 kJ mol−1) for the model reaction.