Rational Control of the Selectivity of a Ruthenium Catalyst for Hydrogenation of 4-Nitrostyrene by Strain Regulation

Junjie Mao; Wenxing Chen; Wenming Sun; Zheng Chen; Jiajing Pei; Dongsheng He; Chunlin Lv; Dingsheng Wang; Yadong Li

doi:10.1002/anie.201706645

Rational Control of the Selectivity of a Ruthenium Catalyst for Hydrogenation of 4-Nitrostyrene by Strain Regulation

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2017 Sep 18;56(39):11971-11975. doi: 10.1002/anie.201706645. Epub 2017 Aug 15.

Authors

Junjie Mao¹, Wenxing Chen¹, Wenming Sun², Zheng Chen¹, Jiajing Pei¹, Dongsheng He¹, Chunlin Lv¹, Dingsheng Wang¹, Yadong Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Green Building Materials, China Building Materials Academy, 100041, Beijing, China.

PMID: 28710802
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201706645

Abstract

Tuning the selectivity of metal catalysts is of paramount importance yet a great challenge. A new strategy to effectively control the selectivity of metal catalysts, by tuning the lattice strain, is reported. A certain amount of Co atoms is introduced into Ru catalysts to compress the Ru lattice, as confirmed by aberration-corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) measurements. We discover that the lattice strain of Ru catalysts can greatly affect their selectivity, and Ru with 3 % lattice compression exhibits extremely high catalytic selectivity for hydrogenation of 4-nitrostyrene to 4-aminostyrene compared to pristine Ru (99 % vs. 66 %). Theoretical studies confirm that the optimized lateral compressive strain facilitates hydrogenation of the nitro group but impedes the hydrogenation of the vinyl group. This study provides a new guideline for designing metal catalysts with high selectivity.

Keywords: Ru nanoparticles; cobalt; heterogeneous catalysis; hydrogenation; lattice strain.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't