Mo 2 C Promoted Pd Nanoparticles on Hierarchical Porous Carbon for Enhanced Selective Hydrogenation of Nitroarenes

Bimetallic catalysts hold great expectations for high catalytic performance, typically, due to the geometric and electronic interactions between metal and promoter on the catalyst. This work is committed to developing a bimetallic catalyst that incorporates uniform Pd and Mo carbide for selective hydrogenation. By adding SiO 2 templates to glucose–metal cation complexation, which etched after carbonization, a unique hierarchical mesoporous carbon can be synthesized in which uniformly distributed Pd nanoparticles interact with Mo 2 C deposited in the vicinity. The porous PdMo 2 C/C catalyst is used for the selective hydrogenation of nitroaromatics and found to achieve full conversion at room temperature in 25 min, which shows significantly higher turnover frequencies (TOFs) as compared with porous Mo 2 C/C and Pd/C. This activity enhancement contributed to the electronic interaction between Mo 2 C and Pd particles, resulting in a promotive effect on H 2 activation. The PdMo 2 C/C catalyst presents a stable recycling performance for the hydrogenation of nitrobenzene. We believe that these findings can be easily extended to produce other metal-carbide-based hierarchical porous carbon catalysts for various advanced applications.