LAUSR

Abstract Due to the high volumetric density and environmentally friendly hydrolysis products, sodium borohydride as a promising candidate for chemical hydrogen storage has been intensively employed, but it needed expensive noble metals or complicated materials or processes. In this work, a new type of catalyst with very simple synthetic route form available and low-cost precursors has been introduced for hydrolysis of sodium borohydride with high efficiency. Fe2O3 nanosheets were synthesized with a straightforward route using glucose, urea and ferric nitrate and then the core sheets were coated by nitrogen doped carbon material using citric acid and urea as carbon and nitrogen sources. The core-shell nanosheets have been well confirmed by TEM images. Moreover, the elemental compositions were fully addressed by XPS analysis. Because of the acidic and basic groups on the presented material, the catalyst showed excellent catalytic activity with hydrogen production rate of 637 mL (H2) min−1·gcat −1. It is notable that the rate was calculated based on the whole amount of the catalyst, while in other reports the metal active sites have been employed for calculations. To find the most promising nanostructure of α-Fe2O3, influence of Fe2O3 morphology on the catalytic activity was also investigated.