Ultra-small PdAuIr nanoparticles on amine-functionalized porous organic polymers for efficient dehydrogenation from FA at room temperature

Formic acid (FA) is a prospective hydrogen storage agent, which has attracted much attention for its low toxicity and stability and plays a significant role in the comprehensive implementation of the hydrogen economy . In this regard, it is very important to utilize additive free FA dehydrogenation , for which few heterogeneous catalysts are available. Herein, we report ultra-small PdAuIr nanoparticles (NPs) supported on amine-based amorphous porous organic polymers (POPs), which exhibit excellent FA dehydrogenation activity with an initial total turnover number (TOF) of 9635 h −1 without additives at room temperature and apparent activation energy ( Ea app ) of 36.5 kJ/mol. The results show that the excellent performance can be attributed to the synergistic effect of trimetallic alloys and strong metal-support interaction effect (SMSI), as well as to the amine groups (-NH 2 ) grafted on POPs which facilitates the O–H bond splitting on FA. Overall, the simple and efficient synthetic strategy provides a new method for the selective dehydrogenation of FA.