Tandem Upgrading of Bio-Furans to Benzene, Toluene, and p-xylene by PtSn Intermetallic Coupling Ordered Mesoporous SnO Catalyst.

Benzene, toluene, and p-xylene (BTpX) are among the most important commodity chemicals, but their productions still heavily rely on fossil resources and thus pose serious environmental burdens and energy crisis. Herein, the tandem upgrading of bio-furans is reported to high-yield BTpX by rationally constructing a versatile PtSn intermetallic coupling ordered-mesoporous SnO (OM-SnO) catalyst. It is shown that with increasing reduction temperature from 200 to 350°C, Pt nanoparticles (NPs) are first formed on OM-SnO, then converted to PtSn intermetallic nanoparticles (iNPs), and finally to PtSn iNPs with a gradually-thickened SnO overlayer.

Silanol-Assisted High-Yield Nanofabrication of SnO Single Crystals with Highly Tunable and Ordered Mesoporosity.

Highly ordered mesoporous materials with a single-crystalline structure have attracted broad interest due to their wide applications from catalysis to energy conversion/storage, but constructing them with good controllability and high yields remains a highly daunting task. Herein, we construct a new class of three-dimensionally ordered mesoporous SnO single crystals (3DOm-SnO) with well-defined facets and excellent mesopore tunability. Mechanism studies demonstrate that the silanol groups on ordered silica nanospheres (3DO-SiO) can induce the efficient heterogeneous crystallization of uniform SnO single crystals in its periodic voids by following the hard and soft acid and base theory, affording a much higher yield of ∼96% for 3DOm-SnO than that of its solid counterpart prepared in the absence of 3DO-SiO (∼1.