One-pot synthesis of highly sintering- and coking-resistant Ni nanoparticles encapsulated in dendritic mesoporous SiO2 for methane dry reforming.

We present a one-pot method for the encapsulation of small Ni particles into a dendritic SiO2 skeleton. Such confined Ni particles are robust against metal particle sintering and preferentially grow amorphous carbon instead of graphitized carbon, which maintain high activity and stability towards methane dry reforming at 700 °C for 200 h.