The catalytic hydrogenation of nitroarenes is an environmentally benign technology for the production of anilines, which are key intermediates for manufacturing agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and dyes. Most of the precious metal catalysts, however, suffer from low chemoselectivity when one or more reducible groups are present in a nitroarene molecule. Herein we report FeO_x-supported platinum single-atom and pseudo-single-atom structures as highly active, chemoselective and reusable catalysts for hydrogenation of a variety of substituted nitroarenes. For hydrogenation of 3-nitrostyrene, the catalyst yields a TOF of ~1,500 h^-1, 20-fold higher than the best result reported in literature, and a selectivity to 3-aminostyrene close to 99%, the best ever achieved over platinum group metals. The superior performance can be attributed to the presence of positively charged platinum centres and the absence of Pt–Pt metallic bonding, both of which favour the preferential adsorption of nitro groups.

The development of thermodynamically stable supported bimetallic catalysts for high-temperature reaction is significant and highly desirable but remains a grand challenge. In this work, we report a novel approach that relies on the interaction of metal nanoparticles with the support material to form unique bimetallic nanoparticles, which epitaxially anchor onto the support surface. Such unique nanostructured systems are catalytically active and ultrastable during selected catalytic reactions. In this paper, we describe the synthesis processes of ultrastable PtZn nanoparticles epitaxially anchored onto ZnO nanowires, which primarily consist of {10−10} nanoscale facets. Such anchored PtZn nanoparticles demonstrated good stability during high temperature treatments and selected catalytic reactions. The synthesis approach reported in this work provides a new strategy to develop thermodynamically stable supported bimetallic catalysts.