Template-oriented synthesis of Fe-N codoped graphene nanoshells derived from petroleum pitch for efficient nitroaromatics reduction

In this study, we demonstrate a noble metal-free Fe-N codoped graphene nanoshells (Fe-N/GNS) derived from petroleum pitch as highly efficient and cost-effective catalysts for nitroaromatics reduction. By employing α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles simultaneously as both the hard template and metal source, Fe-N/GNS can be facilely synthesized through the template-oriented method, followed by thermal annealing with urea for nitrogen doping. Owing to the high-dispersed synergetic Fe-N active sites, as well as hierarchical porous nanoshell structure, the Fe-N/GNS catalysts show remarkable catalytic performance and good tolerance for the reduction of nitroaromatics with NaBH4 aqueous solution. The optimized Fe-N/GNS-800 corresponds to pseudo-first-order kinetics for p-nitrophenol reduction at room temperature, with the rate constant (k) reaching 1.23 min-1. The reinforced structure also allows the catalyst to be readily recycled for a dozen of times without activity deterioration. This work may pave a new avenue to facile...