Highly-dispersed and thermally-stable NiO nanoparticles exclusively confined in SBA-15: Blockage-free nanochannels

In this work, exclusive formation of metal oxide nanoparticles confined in ordered mesoporous supports was achieved by a hydrophobic encapsulation route illustrated with the NiO/SBA-15 system. Uniform, discrete and thermally-stable NiO nanoparticles are well-distributed in a confined space. The confined nanoparticles possessed high thermal stability, the average size only slightly increasing from 2.83 nm to 3.69 nm after treatment at 900 degrees C. The NiO-confined nanochannels show no blockages, even though the NiO loading is as high as 18.55 wt%. This blockage-free nanoarchitecture greatly enhances application in catalysis, as demonstrated by the methanation reaction, for which the new catalyst was similar to 18.5 times as effective as conventional types.