Surface evolution of ferrous scrap-derived amorphous FeCoB fibers for superior catalytic degradation

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Utilizing ferrous scrap as a functional material holds great potential for high-value applications. However, increasing its specific surface area and enhancing its catalytic performance under low energy consumption remain significant challenges. Moreover, impurity elements in ferrous scrap may deteriorate catalytic performance, making the selection of an appropriate composition system particularly critical. Here, a straightforward rapid solidification method is successfully used to increase the specific surface area of catalysts and to tune their structure into an amorphous state. Compared with catalysts with lower carbon and silicon contents, the FeCoB-3 fibers with high carbon and silicon contents achieve complete degradation of organic pollutants within 60 s, demonstrating excellent catalytic performance, with a reaction pathway featuring a dual-enhancement mechanism involving both radical and non-radical processes. The experimental and characterization results reveal that during the degradation reaction, the FeCoB catalyst undergoes surface synergistic evolution, including increased roughness, enhanced hydrophilicity, and morphological reconstruction. FeCoB can facilitate the detachment of the silicon oxide layer, alleviate the inhibitory effect of silicon on catalytic performance, expose more active sites, and improve contact and mass transfer efficiency between reactants and the catalyst, thereby synergistically enhancing catalytic degradation performance. These findings offer new ideas and broad prospects for the high-value reuse of ferrous scrap and for reducing the negative effects of impurity elements.