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A general bottom-up synthesis of CuO-based trimetallic oxide mesocrystal superstructures for efficient catalytic production of trichlorosilane

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Abstract

Mesocrystals, the non-classical crystals with highly ordered nanoparticle superstructures, have shown great potential in many applications because of their newly collective properties. However, there is still a lack of a facile and general synthesis strategy to organize and integrate distinct components into complex mesocrystals, and of reported application for them in industrial catalytic reactions. Herein we report a general bottom-up synthesis of CuO-based trimetallic oxide mesocrystals (denoted as CuO-M1Ox-M2Oy, where M1 and M2 = Zn, In, Fe, Ni, Mn, and Co) using a simple precipitation method followed by a hydrothermal treatment and a topotactic transformation via calcination. When these mesocrystals were used as the catalyst to produce trichlorosilane (TCS) via Si hydrochlorination reaction, they exhibited excellent catalytic performance with much increased Si conversion and TCS selectivity. In particular, the TCS yield was increased 19-fold than that of the catalyst-free process. The latter is the current industrial process. The efficiently catalytic property of these mesocrystals is attributed to the formation of well-defined nanoscale heterointerfaces that can effectively facilitate the charge transfer, and the generation of the compressive and tensile strain on CuO near the interfaces among different metal oxides. The synthetic approach developed here could be applicable to fabricate versatile complicated metal oxide mesocrystals as novel catalysts for various industrial chemical reactions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21878301, 21978299, and 21908224). Z. Z. thanks the kind support of Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) for the collaboration.

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Author notes

  1. Hezhi Liu and Yongjun Ji contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Complex Systems, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Hezhi Liu, Yongjun Ji, Jing Li, Yu Zhang & Fabing Su

  2. School of Light Industry, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing, 100048, China

    Yongjun Ji

  3. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Special Steel, Shanghai University, Yanchang Road 149, Zhabei District, Shanghai, 200072, China

    Hezhi Liu & Xueguang Wang

  4. College of Materials Sciences and Engineering, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, China

    Haijun Yu

  5. Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Dingsheng Wang & Yadong Li

  6. College of Engineering, Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT), 241 Daxue Road, Shantou, 515063, China

    Ziyi Zhong

  7. Department of Chemical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (IIT), Haifa, 32 000, Israel

    Ziyi Zhong

  8. Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Lin Gu

  9. Institute of Industrial Chemistry and Energy Technology, Shenyang University of Chemical Technology, Shenyang, 110142, China

    Guangwen Xu & Fabing Su

  10. Zhongke Langfang Institute of Process Engineering, Fenghua Road No 1, Langfang Economic & Technical Development Zone, Langfang, 065001, China

    Fabing Su

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  1. Hezhi Liu
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Correspondence to Yongjun Ji or Fabing Su.

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12274_2020_2934_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

A general bottom-up synthesis of CuO-based trimetallic oxide mesocrystal superstructures for efficient catalytic production of trichlorosilane

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Liu, H., Ji, Y., Li, J. et al. A general bottom-up synthesis of CuO-based trimetallic oxide mesocrystal superstructures for efficient catalytic production of trichlorosilane. Nano Res. 13, 2819–2827 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2934-2

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