Abstract
The enormous and urgent need to explore cost-effective catalysts with high efficiency has always been at the forefront of environmental protection and remediation research. This work develops a novel strategy for the fabrication of reusable CuO-based non-noble metal nanomaterials as high-efficiency catalysts. We report a facile and eco-friendly synthesis of CuO hexapods and CuO–Ag composite using uric acid as a reductant and protectant. Both exhibited high catalytic activity in the hydrogenation of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP) by sodium borohydride (NaBH4), with the CuO–Ag composite showing superior catalytic performance. Notably, the highest turnover frequency of CuO–Ag reached 7.97 × 10−2 s−1, which was much higher than numerous noble-metal nanomaterials. In addition, CuO hexapods and CuO–Ag composite were also shown to act as highly efficient and recyclable catalysts in the degeneration of 4-NP. Both CuO hexapods and the CuO–Ag composite exhibited outstanding catalytic durability, with no significant loss of activity over more than 10 cycles in the hydrogenation of 4-NP.
Highlights
The enormous and urgent need to explore cost-effective catalysts with high efficiency has always been at the forefront of environmental protection and remediation research
We report a facile and eco-friendly synthesis of CuO hexapods and CuO–Ag composite using uric acid as a reductant and protectant
For CuO hexapod synthesis, uric acid acted as both reductant and protectant
Summary
4-Nitrophenol is one of most common nitroaromatic compounds used to produce pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, pharmaceuticals and explosives.[1,2,3] due to its toxicity and potential carcinogenicity, 4-NP has been identi ed as a dangerous organic contaminant by the US Environmental Protection Agency.[4]. Ag can catalyse a range of reductive chemical reactions transforming both organic and inorganic environmental pollutants.[11] The unique characteristics conductivity and surface area-normalized turnover frequencies of Ag endow it is considered one of the few technoeconomically viable alternatives to Pt, such as in oxygen reduction reaction.[34] extending the ideas above on Cubased heterobimetallic ensembles, density functional theory (DFT) simulations have shown that in the nanoalloy form, CuAg NPs have a high density of states at the Fermi level These data suggested they might represent compelling alternatives to expensive Pt-based catalysts.[34,35] This view of the promise of Agbased nanomaterials in catalysts led,[36] for instance, Ren and coworkers to report the synthesis of Ag-covered Cu2O by galvanic replacement and delivered highly effective CO2 reduction.[28]. Excellent reusability of both CuO hexapods and CuO–Ag composite in the reduction of 4-NP has been veri ed using recycling experiments
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