Solvent-free fabrication of an Ni2P/UiO-66 catalyst for the hydrogenation of furfural to cyclopentanone†

Dispersing metal phosphides on supports with large surface areas is a feasible way to boost the catalytic hydrogenation performance. However, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), which are very promising porous materials, have rarely been used to load metal phosphides owing to the harsh synthesis conditions of metal phosphides. This work demonstrated a facile and solvent-free method to construct a highly dispersed Ni₂P/UiO-66 catalyst (the particle size of Ni₂P was 2.9 nm). In this method, a nickel precursor was loaded on UiO-66 via simple ball milling, followed by phosphatization, to obtain the Ni₂P/UiO-66 catalyst using sodium hypophosphite at 300 °C. This solvent-free process is in line with the concept of green synthesis. In addition, the prepared Ni₂P/UiO-66 catalyst showed good catalytic performance for the hydrogenation of furfural to cyclopentanone, with 97.5% yield of cyclopentanone under the conditions of 0.5 MPa H₂ at 150 °C for 10 h.