Hollow Nitrogen-Rich Carbon Nanoworms with High Activity for Metal-Free Selective Aerobic Oxidation of Benzyl Alcohol

Carbon materials have become one of the research hotspots in the field of catalysis as a typical representative of non-metallic catalytic materials. Herein, a facile synthetic strategy is developed to fabricate a series of hollow carbon nanoworms (h-NCNWs) that contain nitrogen up to 9.83 wt% by employing graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) as the sacrificing template and solid nitrogen source. The h-NCNWs catalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM), N-2 adsorption-desorption, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermal gravimetric (TG), Raman spectra, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies (XPS). The catalytic activities of the h-NCNWs catalysts for selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol with O-2 were also evaluated. The characterization results revealed that the h-NCNWs catalysts displayed a unique hollow worm-like nanostructure with turbostratic carbon shells. The nitrogen content and shell thickness can be tuned by varying the relative ratio of resorcinol to g-C3N4 during the preparation process. Furthermore, nitrogen is incorporated to the carbon network in the form of graphite (predominantly) and pyridine, which is critical for the enhancement of the catalytic activity of carbon catalysts for the selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol. At a reaction temperature of 120 degrees C, a 24.9% conversion of benzyl alcohol with > 99% selectivity to benzaldehyde can be achieved on the h-NCNWs catalyst prepared with a mass ratio of resorcinol to g-C3N4 of 0.5. However, the catalytic activities of the h-NCNWs catalysts were dependent on the amount of N dopants, in particular graphitic nitrogen species. The conversion of benzyl alcohol markedly decreased to 13.1% on the h-NCNWs catalyst prepared with a mass ratio of resorcinol to g-C3N4 of 1.5. Moreover, the h-NCNWs catalyst showed excellent stability during the reaction process. The conversion of benzyl alcohol and the high selectivity to aldehyde can be kept within five catalytic runs over the h-NCNWs0.5 catalyst. These results indicate that rationally designed carbon materials have great potential as highly efficient heterogeneous catalysts for oxidation reactions.