Graphite oxide was prepared from flake graphite by Hummers method and dispersed by ultrasonic treatment. The amorphous Ni-B/rGO composite catalysts were prepared by one-step chemical reduction with NaBH4 as reducing agent

and tested in the catalytic hydrogenation of pinene as the probing reaction. It shows that the as-prepared catalysts exhibit high catalytic activity and relatively high enantioselectivity of 96.5% for cis-pinane

which is better than the traditional Raney nickel and even noble metal catalysts. The catalyst possessed good stability

evidenced by that after 8-times testing cycles

both the conversion of pinene and the enantioselectivity to cis-pinane remained at a good level. The structure and properties of amorphous Ni-B/rGO composite catalysts were measured by XRD

XPS

TEM techniques

and the relationship between the catalytic performance and the structure was explored. The higher activity of the Ni-B/rGO amorphous catalyst could be attributed to the highly uniform dispersion of the Ni-B active species with unique electronic structure

and the interaction between Ni-B active species and the rGO in the composite catalysts．