The synergistic catalytic effect between graphene oxide and three-dimensional ordered mesoporous Co3O4 nanoparticles for low-temperature CO oxidation

Abstract

Three-dimensional ordered mesoporous (3D) Co3O4 as a transition metal oxide is widely used in CO catalytic oxidation, and graphene oxide has the abundant oxygen-containing groups and oxygen vacancies which are beneficial to promote the activity of Co3O4-based catalyst. In this paper, the 3D Co3O4/GO catalysts are applied to CO catalytic oxidation reaction and we studied in detail the synergistic effect between 3D Co3O4 and GO. Three dimensionally ordered mesoporous Co3O4/GO (3D Co3O4/GO) catalysts are prepared by solvothermal method. The addition of graphene oxide obviously increased the specific surface area and promoted the dispersion of active metal. The oxygen-containing groups on the surface of graphene oxide increase the reactive sites simultaneously. The synergistic effect of graphene oxide and Co3O4 made the 3D Co3O4/GO catalyst showed excellent catalytic activity. Moreover, the influence of solvent (water, ethanol, ethylene glycol) was studied. The results showed that the change of the solvent did not affect the structure of the metal oxide, but affected the chemical state of the metal and the concentration of oxygen-containing functional groups on the surface of catalyst.