Metal Nanoparticles in Liquid Phase Catalysis

Abstract

Tremendous efforts have been devoted on the development of efficient and safe hydrogen storage materials. Among them amine boranes, such as ammonia borane, dimethylamine borane, and hydrazine borane, have attracted much attention as promising chemical hydrogen storage materials. Recently, we have published many reports on the development of transition metal(0) nanoparticles dispersed in solution as highly active catalyst in hydrogen generation from amine boranes at room temperature. In this chapter, we put all the results given in those reports together to show (i) that transition metal(0) NPs dispersed in solution can catalyze the hydrogen generation from amine boranes at room temperature, (ii) how to improve the catalytic activity and durability of transition metal(0) NPs in solution by selecting a suitable stabilizer for a certain metal and varying the relative concentration of stabilizer in reaction solution.