Metal-mediated weak adsorption enables the selective electrosynthesis of N-phenylhydroxylamine from nitrobenzene hydrogenation in water
Zhaole Lu, Rong Yang, Renxiang Cheng, Lingjun Kong, Bin Zhang · 2026
Read Metal-mediated weak adsorption enables the selective electrosynthesis of N-phenylhydroxylamine from nitrobenzene hydrogenation in water by Zhaole Lu, Rong Yang, Renxiang Cheng, Lingjun Kong, Bin Zhang (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13522461.txt.
Description
Lu and colleagues report a cleaner way to make N-phenylhydroxylamine, a building block used in drug manufacturing, by reducing nitrobenzene with electricity in water during 2026 research on green chemistry. The hard part is stopping the reaction halfway, because the product easily reacts further into a different compound. The team argues that a metal surface which holds the product only weakly lets it leave before that extra step happens.
Screening metals by how strongly they bind an intermediate pointed to silver as the best candidate, and tests with infrared light confirmed the weak hold on silver. Their electrodeposited silver catalyst, called CV-Ag, then ran at ampere-level current while reaching selectivity of nearly 99.6 percent toward the desired product across the run. It also kept producing steadily at gram scale, delivering batches of 5.85 grams each without losing that selectivity.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Zhaole Lu, Rong Yang, Renxiang Cheng, Lingjun Kong, Bin Zhang |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 37 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |