Platinum supported on reduced graphene oxide as a catalyst for hydrogenation of nitroarenes Original Research Article

Reduced graphene oxide (RGO)-supported platinum (Pt) catalyst was prepared by simple ethylene glycol (EG) reduction and used for hydrogenation of nitroarenes. Characterizations showed that EG as a reductant exhibited more advantages than the widely used hydrazine hydrate to fabricate monodispersed, small sized Pt nanoparticles on the surface of RGO. The yield of aniline over the Pt/RGO-EG catalyst reached 70.2 mol-AN/(mol-Pt min) at 0 oC, which is 12.5 and 19.5 times higher than that of multi-walled carbon nanotube- and active carbon-supported Pt catalysts, respectively. When the reaction temperature was increased to 20 oC, the catalytic activity of Pt/RGO-EG jumped to 1138.3 mol-AN/(mol-Pt min), and it was also extremely active for the hydrogenation of a series of nitroarenes. The unique catalytic activity of Pt/RGO-EG is not only related to the well dispersed Pt clusters on the RGO sheets but also the well dispersion of Pt/RGO-EG in the reaction mixture.