2019, Zhao, Dan, Li, Yuming, Han, Shanlei, Zhang, Yaoyuan, Jiang, Guiyuan, Wang, Yajun, Guo, Ke, Zhao, Zhen, Xu, Chunming, Li, Ranjia, Yu, Changchun, Zhang, Jian, Ge, Binghui, Kondratenko, Evgenii V.

Chemistry; Catalysis; Nanoparticles © 2019 The Author(s)Non-oxidative propane dehydrogenation (PDH)is an attractive reaction from both an industrial and a scientific viewpoint because it allows direct large-scale production of propene and fundamental analysis of C-H activation respectively. The main challenges are related to achieving high activity, selectivity, and on-stream stability of environment-friendly and cost-efficient catalysts without non-noble metals. Here, we describe an approach for the preparation of supported ultrasmall ZnO nanoparticles (2–4 nm, ZnO NPs)for high-temperature applications. The approach consists of encapsulation of NPs into a nitrogen-doped carbon (NC)layer in situ grown from zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 on a Silicalite-1 support. The NC layer was established to control the size of ZnO NPs and to hinder their loss to a large extent at high temperatures. The designed catalysts exhibited high activity, selectivity, and on-stream stability in PDH. Propene selectivity of about 90% at 44.4% propane conversion was achieved at 600°C after nearly 6 h on stream. © 2019 The Author(s)

2020, Parinova, E.V., Pisliaruk, A.K., Schleusener, A., Koyuda, D.A., Chumakov, R.G., Lebedev, A.M., Ovsyannikov, R., Makarova, A., Smirnov, D., Sivakov, V., Turishchev, S.Yu.

The combined X-ray absorption and emission spectroscopy approach was applied for the detailed electronic structure and composition studies of silicon nanoparticles produced by the ultrasound milling of heavily and lowly doped Si nanowires formed by metal-assisted wet chemical etching. The ultrasoft X-ray emission spectroscopy and synchrotron based X-ray absorption near edges structure spectroscopy techniques were utilize to study the valence and conduction bands electronic structure together with developed surface phase composition qualitative analysis. Our achieved results based on the implemented surface sensitive techniques strongly suggest that nanoparticles under studies show a significant presence of the silicon suboxides depending on the pre-nature of initial Si wafers. The controlled variation of the Si nanoparticles surface composition and electronic structure, including band gap engineering, can open a new prospective for a wide range Si-based nanostructures application including the integration of such structures with organic or biological systems. © 2020