Stable and Antisintering Tungsten Carbides with Controllable Active Phase for Selective Cleavage of Aryl Ether C–O Bonds

Transition-metal carbides are important materials in heterogeneous catalysis. It remains challenging yet attractive nanoscience to construct the active phase of carbide catalysts a controllable manner and keep sintering-resistant property redox reactions, especially hydroprocessing. In this work, an integrated strategy was presented synthesize stable well-defined tungsten nanoparticles (NPs) by assembling metal precursor onto carbon nanotubes (CNTs), wrapping thin polymeric layer, following controlled carburization. The polymer served as soft source modulate metal/carbon ratio introduced amorphous carbons around prevent NPs from sintering. as-built p-WxC/CNT displayed high stability hydrogenolysis aryl ether C–O bond guaiacol for more than 150 h. Its activity two six times higher those prepared via typical temperature-programmed reduction with gaseous (WxC/CNT-TPR) carbothermal intrinsic support (WxC/CNT-CTR), respectively. Our catalyst also achieved efficiency selective cleavage bonds lignin-derived aromatic ethers, including anisole, dimethoxylphenol, diphenyl ether, robust lifespan.