Hollow ni-p amorphous alloy nanospheres: An efficient catalyst for sugars hydrogenation to polyols

In this paper, hollow Ni − P nanospheres (NSs) are prepared through Ni electroless plating on the Au-activated silica NSs externally covered by aminopropyl moieties, followed by removing the silica template with sodium hydroxide. With various characterizations, the resulting hollow Ni − P NSs are identified to be amorphous alloy. During liquid-phase hydrogenation of sugars to sugar alcohols, the hollow Ni − P amorphous alloy NSs delivered much superior catalytic performances to the commercial Raney Ni catalyst, showing a good potential in practical applications. Of particular interest is the unique hollow chamber structure of the hollow Ni − P amorphous alloy NSs, which allows for improving catalytic activity and durability relative to those associated with the dense Ni − P amorphous alloy NSs. This work demonstrated that such hollow Ni materials with nanoporous chamber structure displayed advantages such as easy experimental handling and high accessibility for the reactants in liquid-phase reaction, more Ni active sites, as well as the existence of more electron-enriched inner surface, which is essential to provide highly efficient catalysts for some reactions.