The recent escalation of energy, environmental, and resource problems has stimulated the development of high-performance catalytic materials that can efficiently promote specific chemical reactions. While much effort has been devoted to enhancing the activities of catalysts, one of the present challenges is the structural design of supporting materials to provide effective access of the reactants to the catalysts. Paper materials can be promising catalyst supports, because they have high porosity and interconnected porous structures derived from cellulose fiber networks. These characteristics are applicable to flow processes for continuous synthesis of target products.<br/>Here we report the structural design of cellulose paper for catalytic applications. The gold nanocatalysts/cellulose paper composites were prepared by using a papermaking technique, and their catalytic performances were improved by structural control of the paper composite using a solvent exchange technique. Then, the hierarchical nano/micro fiber-network structures, which were derived from nanocellulose-network nanostructures inside pulp fibers and pulp fiber-network microstructures, demonstrated excellent catalytic efficiency in a continuous flow-type 4-nitrophenol reduction reaction. This concept can be a promising route to green and sustainable chemistry.

Catalytic paper reactor with a nano/micro hybrid porous structures

251st National Meeting (2016)

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