Zn‐Assisted Evaporation‐Pyrolysis Strategy to Prepare Tannic Acid‐Derived Fe‐Fe 3 C‐Fe 3 O 4 @CN‐
Xuewei Li, Zeyu Sha, Yue Liu, Shoushan Yang, Rui Sun, Zirui Wang, Xuefeng BaiABSTRACT
The selective hydrogenation of nitroarenes is an indispensable reaction for the production of high‐value arylamines in fine chemical and pharmaceutical industries. However, it remains challenging to develop low‐cost, high‐efficiency, and durable non‐noble metal catalysts for such reactions under mild conditions. In this contribution, a novel Fe‐Fe 3 C‐Fe 3 O 4 embedded in nitrogen‐doped carbon (Fe‐Fe 3 C‐Fe 3 O 4 @CN‐l) was successfully prepared using biomass tannic acid as a sustainable precursor via a facile Zn‐assisted evaporation‐pyrolysis route. Structural analyses based on XRD, TEM, BET, Raman, and XPS confirm that the evaporation of Zn species during pyrolysis effectively regulates the Fe‐based nanoparticles, improves metal dispersion, enriches carbon defects, increases specific surface area, and generates abundant Fe‐N species. Using hydrazine hydrate as a green hydrogen donor, the optimized catalyst exhibits outstanding hydrogenation performance, achieving a nitrobenzene conversion of 98.5% and aniline selectivity above 99.8%. Moreover, the catalyst possesses excellent substrate adaptability toward various functionalized nitroarenes and prominent reusability without noticeable performance decay after five consecutive cycles. This work provides a facile, green, and universal strategy for the rational design and fabrication of high‐performance biomass‐derived non‐noble metal catalysts for advanced hydrogenation applications.