On July 1, a research paper entitled "Highly Dispersed Gold Nanoparticles Anchoring on Post-Modified Covalent Organic Framework for Catalytic Application" was published in Chemical Engineering Journal, which was performed by Professor Chun Zhang’s group from National Engineering Research Center for Nanomedicine, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
Metal nanoparticles (NPs), one of the most important heterogeneous catalysts, have attracted more and more interests during the past years. Generally, metal nanoparticles display high catalytic activity for many organic and inorganic reactions under mild conditions due to their high surface energy that at the same time makes metal NPs thermodynamically unstable and easily to aggregate into larger particles during long-term catalytic operation, which leads to a decrease of catalytic activity and furthermore limits their application scope. Therefore, the preparation of stable metal nanoparticles has become a challenging topic in this field. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs), an outstanding representation of the porous crystalline polymers, have raised great concerns. Due to the advantages of good stability, regular pores, and chemical modifiability, COFs have been gradually used as matrix to stabilize metal NPs.
Professor Chun Zhang’s group introduced sulfur-containing groups into covalent organic framework materials by post-modification strategy, and successfully prepared COF-supported Au NPs with narrow size distribution and high distribution density, which shows excellent catalytic activities in reduction of 4-nitrophenol with remarkable stability and recyclability. The results of this study laid the foundation for the development of highly efficient and stable metal nanoparticle heterogeneous catalysts.
Master Qing-pu Zhang and Master candidate Yu-ling Sun from Huazhong University of Science and Technology are co-first authors. Profs. Chun Zhang and Bien Tan from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Prof. San-yuan Ding from Lanzhou University, and Researcher Jian-hua Bu from Xi’an Modern Chemistry Research Institute, are the co-corresponding authors. PhD Guang Cheng from the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Zhen Wang, and PhD candidate Hui Ma from the College of Life Sciences and Technology participated in part of the work. The first author affiliation is Huazhong University of Science and Technology. This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundations（21875079 and 21672078）.
