Abstract
In this paper, we designed Ag nanoparticles coated with a Cu2O shell, which was successfully decorated on reduced graphene oxide (rGO) via a solid-state self-reduction. The Cu2O, Ag@Cu2O, and Ag@Cu2O-rGO nanocomposites were synthesized and characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV–Vis, and XPS to evaluate the properties of the composites. In order to compare the chemical catalytic activity, the Cu2O, Ag@Cu2O, and Ag@Cu2O-rGO nanocomposites were employed for the catalytic reduction of p-nitrophenol (4-NP) into p-aminophenol (4-AP) in aqueous solution. The Ag@Cu2O-rGO nanocomposite exhibited excellent catalytic activity due to the intense interaction and high degree of electron transfer among Ag, Cu2O, and rGO. The rGO acted as the platform to bridge the isolated nanoparticles; furthermore, the electrons could quickly transfer from the Ag core to the Cu2O shell, which improved the chemical catalytic efficiency.
Highlights
Two-dimensional (2D) materials are a new kind of materials, whose transverse size is more than 100 nm, or even several microns or larger, but the thickness is only on the single or several atomic scale, has a large specific surface area, and can provide a large number of reaction sites [1,2,3,4]
The reduced graphene oxide (rGO) was prepared by using Hummer and Offeman’s two-part oxidation method [29]
In order to obtain the Ag@Cu2O-rGO composites, the Cu2O was coated on the surface of the Ag nanoparticles (Ag NPs) based on a simple wet chemical method and was decorated on the rGO
Summary
Two-dimensional (2D) materials are a new kind of materials, whose transverse size is more than 100 nm, or even several microns or larger, but the thickness is only on the single or several atomic scale, has a large specific surface area, and can provide a large number of reaction sites [1,2,3,4]. Unique physical and chemical properties give 2D materials a wide range of potential applications, such as catalysis, electronics and optoelectronics, energy storage and conversion, detector and sensor functions, and biomedicine [5,6,7,8,9,10]. Two-dimensional catalytic materials have many interesting characteristics, such as porous structure, high specific surface area, good crystallinity, rich host–guest selectivity, better charge carrier separation, and rich surface-active sites, which are excellent candidates for the synthesis of catalytic materials [11,12,13,14,15]. Graphene has all the properties of ultrathin 2D nanomaterials, such as physical, electronic, chemical, and optical properties, so it has a wide range of applications. Its excellent performance makes it a hot material in the fields of batteries, super-capacitors, solar cells, detection, and sensing [16,17,18,19]
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