Fabrication of an In‐situ Synthesized Porous Silica‐Ruthenium‐Nickel Composite Catalyst for Hydrolysis of Ammonia Borane

Abstract

AbstractThis work investigated in‐situ synthesis of porous silica‐nickel‐ruthenium composite catalysts for hydrolysis of ammonia borane. The precursors were prepared with an anionic surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), to form porous structure in the precursor particles, and the precursors was treated in aqueous solution including sodium borohydride and ammonia borane for in‐situ process to parallelly activate and use the catalysts for hydrolysis of ammonia borane. The result of TEM and nitrogen sorption measurements suggested that the primary particle size of the in‐situ synthesized catalysts decrease with increasing the amount of SDS and sodium chloride as the additive for controlling the primary particle size probably because of the effect of sodium ions to inhibit nuclei growth of the primary particles. From the EDS analyses, the composition of active nickel and ruthenium contents increased with increasing the amount of SDS and sodium chloride except for the highest amount of SDS probably because of adsorption of the metal cations with the excess amount of the surfactant anion to decrease the amount of the metal cations including the catalyst. The in‐situ synthesized catalyst including small size primary particles and high nickel and ruthenium content tended to exhibit high activity for hydrolysis of ammonia borane.