Enhanced catalytic properties of cobaltosic oxide through constructing MXene-supported nanocomposites for ammonium perchlorate thermal decomposition

Abstract The novel Co3O4@MXene nanocomposites (CMNs) were fabricated by a facile, green and highly tunable strategy without using any chemical modifiers. Various characterization results proved that nano-size Co3O4 was loaded on MXene nanosheets and CMNs exhibited a large specific surface area, especially for CMNs-3 (76.9 m2·g−1). The catalytic properties of CMNs for ammonium perchlorate (AP) thermal decomposition were investigated by a series of catalytic experiments. The results showed that the high-temperature decomposition (HTD) temperature and decomposition heat of AP mixed with CMNs-3 (2 wt%) could significantly decrease to 316.3 °C and remarkably increase to 1457.9 J·g−1, respectively. Moreover, the CMNs-3 could significantly reduce the apparent activation energy of AP by 49.1% and increase the value of reaction rate constant of AP by 482.0%. As for the effects of mass content of CMNs-3 on AP decomposition, the HTD temperature could decrease by as high as 128.0 °C with ratios of 10.0 wt% CMNs-3. It could be predicted that CMNs-3 with excellent catalytic performance would be a potential catalyst to promote AP decomposition and the synthesis method of CMNs-3 could provide an idea for the preparation of other metal oxide nanomaterials with high catalytic activity.