Hydrogen production upon the hydrolysis of dimethylamineborane over Pt/Ni(OH)2 nanocomposite

Abstract

Although a large number of advances in the process of new and high-performance catalytic systems for hydrogen production upon the decomposition of dimethylamineborane (DMAB) in neat organic media, there are few studies on the hydrogen production upon DMAB hydrolysis in water. Herein, we first report the synthesis of efficient Pt/Ni(OH)2 nanometerial, via immobilization of PtNPs onto Ni(OH)2 colloid, for the H2 production from DMAB hydrolysis. The selected Pt/Ni(OH)2 nanocomposite exhibits the highest catalytic performance in DMAB hydrolysis, with excellent turnover frequency (TOF) of 7500 h−1 and 100% hydrogen selectivity. The TOF rapidly increases from 7500 to 11116 h−1 with 0.3 M NaOH. The large kinetic isotope effect (KIE) of kH/kD = 2.81 has indicated that the O–H bond breaking in H2O is the rate-controlling step of DMAB hydrolysis. In this mechanism, DMAB hydrolysis produces H2 gas with one hydrogen atom supplied by DMAB and another hydrogen atom by H2O. This study provides a novel, economic and high-efficiency method for developing high-performance Pt-based bimetallic nanomaterials for H2 production and other catalytic systems.