An In Situ Interfacial Assembly Approach to Synthesize a Functional Hierarchical Porous Carbon Nanoreactor with Surface-Confined Platinum

Porous carbon-confined metal nanoreactors have attracted considerable interest in the catalysis field due to the confinement effect, resulting in unique catalytic performance. Nevertheless, conventionally multiple steps and a hazardous acid such as HF are generally required for the synthesis of nanoreactors. Herein, we report a facile and innovative synthetic strategy for fabricating a hierarchical porous carbon sphere (HPCS) surface-confined platinum nanoreactor evolved from PtSA@SiO₂ single-atom (SA) catalysts, during which the etching of the SiO₂ template by polytetrafluoroethylene and the formation of carbon are simultaneously achieved via in situ interfacial assembly without using a hazardous acid/base. Resultantly, the poorly active PtSA@SiO₂ is transformed into high-efficiency PtSA+NP@HPCS with surface-confined Pt species due to the continuous mass transport from the multiordered porosity and active metal-support interactions. The present synthetic strategy is facile and universal, which can also be applied to the direct synthesis of non-noble metal-carbon nanoreactors with surface-confined structure.