Modification of Nano Diamond & Research Progress in Catalytic Reaction

In traditional industrial catalysis area, metal matrix catalysis materials are dominant, but its nonrenewable characteristic and pollution to the environment are the potential weakness of metal materials. How to develop a kind of alternative green energy catalyst is a hotspot and key point of research in recent years. Nano diamond is a kind of sp3 hybridization non-metallic carbon materials. By simply controlling calcination temperature (900 ~ 1500 ℃), we can get two kinds of extensibility carbon materials: bucky type nano diamond (sp2/sp3 hybridization) and carbon onion (sp2).

The surface of nano diamond contains a certain amount of sp2 hybridized carbon, and this kind of unique sp2/sp3 structure makes nano diamond and its derivatives with more unique physical and chemical properties than traditional carbon materials. There is a team to use it in catalysis, and they find that it can show excellent properties in some important industrial catalytic reaction, which can compare with the traditional metal catalysts. For example, carbon onions show excellent catalytic activity and stability.

Recently they have found that the impurity atoms (such as N, P, B) regulation for these three kinds of materials can effectively change the electronic structure and chemical properties, optimize its structure, and further improve the performance of catalytic reaction and enlarge the range of nonmetal catalyst. Studies show that bucky type nano diamond in the gas phase propane oxidation dehydrogenation reaction can inhibit the formation of electrophilic oxygen species to improve the target product propylene selectivity through cover structure defects.

In addition, carbon, nitrogen and modified carbon onions show methanol-tolerance and stability better than commercial Pt/C as nonmetal catalyst even in electrocatalysis oxygen reduction reaction. Not only that, the unique core-shell structure of bucky type nano diamond also plays an important role in fixed Pd nanoparticles as well as in improving CO catalytic oxidation reaction.