Mesoporous Bimetallic RhCu Alloy Nanospheres Using a Sophisticated Soft-Templating Strategy

Mesoporous metals are useful for heterogeneous catalysis because their ultrapermeable architecture promotes mass transport to abundant active sites. Our group recently developed a method to manipulate the interior space of nanocrystals by synthesizing mesoporous Rh nanospheres that serve as high performance catalysts for methanol oxidation and nitric oxide (NO) remediation (Jiang, B.; et al. Nat. Commun. 2017, 8, 15581). Here, we extend this concept and propose a sophisticated soft-templating strategy to synthesize three-dimensional mesoporous bimetallic RhCu nanospheres. The nanospheres are alloys of Rh and Cu, and their compositions can be continuously tuned by varying the amount of metal precursors. The mesoporous RhCu nanospheres were examined for catalytic remediation of NO and show good catalytic performance considering the reduced economic cost of the alloyed material. This method offers a general approach for the precise design of high surface area Rh-based metal catalysts.