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We report the fabrication of a novel and highly active nanocatalyst system comprising electrospun carbon nanofiber (CNF)-supported ruthenium nanoparticles (NPs) (Ru@CNF), which can reproducibly be prepared by the ozone-assisted atomic layer deposition (ALD) of Ru NPs on electrospun CNFs. Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) was electropsun into bead-free one-dimensional (1D) nanofibers by electrospinning. The electrospun PAN nanofibers were converted into well-defined 1D CNFs by a two-step carbonization process. We took advantage of an ozone-assisted ALD technique to uniformly decorate the CNF support by highly monodisperse Ru NPs of 3.4 ± 0.4 nm size. The Ru@CNF nanocatalyst system catalyzes the hydrolytic dehydrogenation of methylamine borane (CH 3 NH 2 BH 3 ), which has been considered as one of the attractive materials for the efficient chemical hydrogen storage, with a record turnover frequency of 563 mol H 2 /mol Ru × min and an excellent conversion (>99%) under air at room temperature with the activation energy ( E a ) of 30.1 kJ/mol. Moreover, Ru@CNF demonstrated remarkable reusability performance and conserved 72% of its inherent catalytic activity even at the fifth recycle.

Herein we report the development of a new and cost-effective nanocomposite catalyst for the hydrolysis of ammonia-borane (NH(3)BH(3)), which is considered to be one of the most promising solid hydrogen carriers because of its high gravimetric hydrogen storage capacity (19.6% wt) and low molecular weight. The new catalyst system consisting of copper nanoparticles supported on magnetic SiO(2)/CoFe(2)O(4) particles was reproducibly prepared by wet-impregnation of Cu(II) ions on SiO(2)/CoFe(2)O(4) followed by in situ reduction of the Cu(II) ions on the surface of magnetic support during the hydrolysis of NH(3)BH(3) and characterized by ICP-MS, XRD, XPS, TEM, HR-TEM and N(2) adsorption-desorption technique. Copper nanoparticles supported on silica coated cobalt(II) ferrite SiO(2)/CoFe(2)O(4) (CuNPs@SCF) act as highly active catalyst in the hydrolysis of ammonia-borane, providing an initial turnover frequency of TOF = 2400 h(-1) at room temperature, which is not only higher than all the non-noble metal catalysts but also higher than the majority of the noble metal based homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts employed in the same reaction. More importantly, they were easily recovered by using a permanent magnet in the reactor wall and reused for up to 10 recycles without losing their inherent catalytic activity significantly, which demonstrates the exceptional reusability of the CuNPs@SCF catalyst.