DA communication titled "Oxygen surface groups of activated carbon steer the chemoselective hydrogenation of substituted nitroarenes over nickel nanoparticles" by Yujing Ren was published in Chemical Communication.

Article link: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2017/CC/C6CC08505A#!divAbstract.

In this work, a low-cost, easily available, and highly active and chemoselective nickel catalyst was developed for the hydrogenation of substituted nitroarenes to the corresponding anilines, as well as for the hydrogenation of a,b-unsaturated nitroarenes to oximes. The oxygen surface groups on the carbon support produced by nitric acid treatment were found to play a key role in both stabilizing the Ni particles and preferential adsorption of nitro groups, as a consequence, leading to the high activity and chemoselectivity. The strategy presented here is expected to find applications in chemoselective hydrogenation of other multifunctional substrates.

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Key Projects for Fundamental Research and Development of China.