Hierarchical porous N-doped carbon supported palladium (Pd/NHPC) as a sustainable catalyst for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol with good activity and lifetime

Recently, porous carbon materials have attracted attention due to their versatile properties. In this study, a hierarchical porous N-doped carbon (NHPC) was successfully synthesized as a catalyst support using a facile method. A large amount of Pd nanoparticles were uniformly loaded on the NHPC with an average diameter of about 4.45 nm. The synthesized Pd/NHPC nanocatalyst exhibited excellent stability and reusability toward the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP) at room temperature. The uniformity and high reusability of Pd/NHPC was mainly attributed to the abundant doped nitrogen as a coordinated site to largely stable Pd nanoparticles. Herein, the excellent properties of NHPC provided ideas for the fabrication of other NHPC supported noble nanoparticles, which can be applied in various catalytic reductive reactions.