A Cost Effective Cobalt Nickel Nanoparticles Catalyst with Exceptional Performance for Hydrolysis of Ammonia-Borane

Herein, we successfully report the development a new cost effective CoNi nanoparticles catalyst for the hydrolysis of ammonia borane. The prepared nanocatalysts have been characterized by ICP– AES, XPS, TEM and HR-TEM. The results show that the CoNi nanoparticles with the size of 4.6 nm are successfully supported vulcanxc-72 surface by a simple co-reduced route. The synthesized CoNi nanocatalysts possess an exceptional catalytic performance for hydrolysis of ammonia-borane corresponding to TOF value of 49 molH2 molcat −1 min−1 at 323 K. The excellent catalytic property is attributed not only the formation of ultrafine nanoparticles on vulcanxc-72 surface but also synergistic effect between Co and Ni. More importantly, the catalytic property for hydrolysis of ammonia borane do not obviously decline up to 6 recycles, which shows the exceptional reusability of CoNi NPs/vulcanxc-72.