Nickel–antimony nanoparticles confined in SBA-15 as highly efficient catalysts for the hydrogenation of nitroarenes

Abstract

NiSb nanoparticles confined in SBA-15 are found to be highly efficient catalysts for nitroarene reduction reactions. The NiSb/SBA-15 catalysts with different chemical compositions were prepared using an adsorption–reduction method and were well characterized by XRD, N₂ sorption, UV-Vis, ICP-OES, SEM, TEM and EDAX. The effect of different metal concentrations of Ni and Sb on the formation of NiSb alloy nanoparticles on SBA-15 was investigated. The XRD, UV and TEM images confirmed the formation of uniform NiSb nanoparticles of size 4–6 nm on the SBA-15 support. The synthesized catalysts were screened for the nitroarene reduction using NaBH₄. The NiSb/SBA-15 catalyst showed excellent catalytic activity compared to NiSb nanoparticles of different particle sizes in p-nitrophenol reduction. The NiSb/SBA-15 catalyst showed superior catalytic activity compared to any Ni nanoparticle catalysts reported so far. The NiSb/SBA-15 catalyst showed enhanced catalytic activity towards the reduction of various nitroarenes compared to Ni/SBA-15.