Salt template-assisted polymer tethering strategy to achieve high dispersed cobalt single atoms/clusters on porous carbon catalysts for effective Fenton-like reactions

The exploration of the synthesis of porous carbon-supported metal nanocatalysts with high metal loading and dispersion for the development of heterogenous catalysts is important. However, this remains a challenging subject. In this paper, a salt template-assisted polymer tethering strategy was proposed to prepare Co single atom and ultrafine cluster anchored on porous carbon (Co-NPC) with a high-loading of 16.9 wt%, thereby exposing high density of reaction sites. The obtained Co-NPC catalyst exhibited excellent catalytic performance for almost 100 % degradation of bisphenol A (BPA) within 20 min, which is much faster than the Co SA -NPC catalyst with only single atom sites and Co-NC without salt template added. Radical quenching experiments and electron paramagnetic resonance tests verified that both the nonradical oxidation pathway by 1 O 2 , the electron transfer and radical oxidation pathway by •OH, SO 4 •- appeared during the degradation process. After 3 cycles, the removal rate of BPA did not decrease significantly. The fixed bed experiment revealed that Co-NPC could realize the continuous degradation of methylene blue (MB) with almost 100 % degradation efficiency. This research indicated that the strategy by pyrolyzing metal coordinated polymer is a potential method for the synthesis of high metal loading catalyst at gram scale, meeting the requirement of practical applications.