Issue 5, 2017

Nanophase-separated Ni3Nb as an automobile exhaust catalyst

Abstract

Catalytic remediation of automobile exhaust has relied on precious metals (PMs) including platinum (Pt). Herein, we report that an intermetallic phase of Ni and niobium (Nb) (i.e., Ni3Nb) exhibits a significantly higher activity than that of Pt for the remediation of the most toxic gas in exhaust (i.e., nitrogen monoxide (NO)) in the presence of carbon monoxide (CO). When subjected to the exhaust-remediation atmosphere, Ni3Nb spontaneously evolves into a catalytically active nanophase-separated structure consisting of filamentous Ni networks (thickness < 10 nm) that are incorporated in a niobium oxide matrix (i.e., NbOx (x < 5/2)). The exposure of the filamentous Ni promotes NO dissociation, CO oxidation and N2 generation, and the NbOx matrix absorbs excessive nitrogen adatoms to retain the active Ni0 sites at the metal/oxide interface. Furthermore, the NbOx matrix immobilizes the filamentous Ni at elevated temperatures to produce long-term and stable catalytic performance over hundreds of hours.

Graphical abstract: Nanophase-separated Ni3Nb as an automobile exhaust catalyst

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
15 Dec 2016
Accepted
12 Mar 2017
First published
13 Mar 2017
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2017,8, 3374-3378

Nanophase-separated Ni3Nb as an automobile exhaust catalyst

T. Tanabe, T. Imai, T. Tokunaga, S. Arai, Y. Yamamoto, S. Ueda, G. V. Ramesh, S. Nagao, H. Hirata, S. Matsumoto, T. Fujita and H. Abe, Chem. Sci., 2017, 8, 3374 DOI: 10.1039/C6SC05473K

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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