The structure of a cobalt-boron catalyst obtained by reduction of cobalt chloride in an aqueous solution of sodium borohydride at ambient temperature has been investigated by TEM HR, XPS, EXAFS and X-ray diffraction method. It was found that nanoparticles of the forming catalyst consisted of a core and a shell. The oxygen-containing compounds (cobalt hydroxide and cobalt borates) mainly reside in the shell. In spite of the amorphous state of the catalyst the EXAFS and X-ray diffraction analysis indicated the presence of ferromagnetic clusters with the shortest CoCo distance of about 2.5 Å and coordination number of 2.7 which are regularly distributed within the core with average separations of 5.8 Å. The presence in the catalyst of the CoB bonds, a short CoCo distance and the absence of long CoCo distances (4.3 and 4.8 Å) as well as the presence of boron bound to hydrogen allows suggestion to be made that stabilization of the cobalt tetramers occurs due to the presence of a boron-hydrogen structure formed by BH₄⁻ ions upon the reduction of cobalt chloride. To substantiate the above model of the active phase of the cobalt-boron catalyst the DFT method with a PBE functional in the plane-wave basis has been employed which showed that the ferromagnetic tetramers may exist within a boron-hydrogen matrix isolated from the surrounding medium by an oxygen-containing shell.

通过TEM HR，XPS，EXAFS和X射线衍射法研究了通过在室温下在硼氢化钠水溶液中还原氯化钴得到的钴硼催化剂的结构。发现形成催化剂的纳米颗粒由核和壳组成。含氧化合物（氢氧化钴和硼酸钴）主要存在于壳中。尽管催化剂处于非晶态，但EXAFS和X射线衍射分析表明，存在着最短Co Co距离约为2.5Å，配位数为2.7的铁磁团簇，它们规则地分布在岩心中，平均间隔为5.8一个。催化剂中存在Co B键，Co Co距离短而Co较长的情况共距离（4.3和4.8埃），以及硼的结合于氢的存在允许进行建议，即钴四聚体稳定化的发生是由于由BH形成的硼-氢结构的存在₄ ^-时的还原离子氯化钴。为了证实钴-硼催化剂活性相的上述模型，采用了在平面波基础上具有PBE功能的DFT方法，该方法表明铁磁四聚体可能存在于与周围介质隔离的硼氢基质中通过含氧的壳。