Ordered Mesoporous Ni–P Amorphous Alloy Nanowire Arrays: High-Efficiency Catalyst for Production of Polyol from Sugar

Mesoporous metals have shown significant potential for use in catalysis; however, controllably synthesizing highly ordered mesoporous amorphous alloys is a serious challenge. In this paper, a synthesis strategy was developed for generating ordered amorphous alloy nanowire arrays from mesoporous Ni–P by combining mesoporous silica templating with electroless plating. Mesoporous silica is externally grafted with −CH 3 and internally covered with −NH 2 acting as an efficient template, ensuring the formation of Ni–P nanowires inside the pore channels and endowing the final product with an ordered mesoporous array structure. The resulting ordered mesoporous Ni–P amorphous alloy nanowire arrays were subjected to a liquid-phase sugar hydrogenation to polyols and exhibited a highly superior catalytic performance (97% glucose conversion and 94% maltose conversion) within 4 h at 4 MPa hydrogen pressure and 373 K relative to those reference catalysts, including conventionally prepared Ni–P amorphous alloy nanoparticles (87% glucose conversion and 86% maltose conversion), ordered mesoporous Ni nanowire arrays (90% glucose conversion and 87% maltose conversion), and the commercial Raney Ni catalyst (76% glucose conversion and 66% maltose conversion). According to a comparative study, the enhanced catalytic efficiencies can be ascribed to the integration of amorphous alloy properties and mesoporous material characteristics. The composition- and morphology-controllable synthesis presented here might supply a general synthetic methodology for rationally designing ordered mesoporous amorphous alloys for a broader range of applications.