(36k) Interfacial Oxygen Vacancy Designed in Ni@CeO2 Surrounded Catalyst Enables Highly Safety Chemo-Selective Transfer Hydrogenation of Nitroarenes

Catalytic hydrogenation of nitroarenes to anilines is an important industrial chemical process. However, the poor selectivity is frequently observed for anilines with multiple functional groups, especially for the highly reactive groups. Herein, we reported a controlled synthesis of surrounded catalyst Ni@CeO₂ with mutually changed interfaces, and propose a strategy of interfacial oxygen vacancy to enable highly chemo-selective hydrogenation, achieving a high TOF (three times larger than traditional sup-ported catalyst Ni-CeO₂) and chemo-selectivity (96.7% Vs. 50.3%) for transfer hydrogenation (with hydrazine hydrate) of 4-nitrostyrene (4-NS) and extended to a set of nitroarenes. The further investigations indicate that the much enriched interfacial oxygen vacancies in Ni@CeO₂ due to the unique mutually changed interface structure, selectively adsorb the nitro groups of 4-NS, hydrazine hydrate is activated on Ni and the followed hydrogen spillover from metal to the interface realizes the chemo-selective hydrogenation.