Hydrophobic carbon dots as spatial confiners for isolating Pd nanoparticles for efficient nitrobenzene hydrogenation.

In this study, hydrophobic carbon dots (hy-CDs) are introduced as a spatial barrier to induce the uniform dispersion of Pd nanoparticles on two-dimensional N-doped carbon nanosheets (Pd/hy-CDs@NCNS). Owing to the surface modification and confinement effect of the hy-CDs, the as-prepared Pd/hy-CDs@NCNS catalyst exhibits a 13-fold enhancement in activity compared to the counterpart prepared without hy-CDs under mild conditions (40 °C, 0.1 MPa H2).