Facile synthesis of CuO/Co3O4 nanoribbons with excellent catalytic performance for reduction of organic dyes

Abstract

In this paper, a facile strategy for the synthesis of composited CuO/Co3O4 nanoribbons is presented based on the supramolecular co-assembly. Large-scale nanosized coordination polymers were obtained under the role of desolvation of the metal ions and ligands, which was used as precursors to construct CuO/Co3O4 nanoribbons. According to the x-ray diffraction (XRD) and inductive coupled plasma emission (ICP) measurements, CuO can be regarded as dispersion phase while Co3O4 can be identified as matrix. What's more, CuO species are homogeneously dispersed in Co3O4 matrix. The catalytic performance of this obtained composited material was measured based on the reduction of organic dye in the presence of NaBH4 as reduction agent, demonstrating that CuO species play the major role in catalytic reaction and the catalytic activity constant was concluded to be 549.02 s−1 g−1. As for Co3O4 species, excellent magnetic property makes it possible for magnetic separation from reaction system. This mass productivity of the CuO/Co3O4 materials with low cost and outstanding catalytic ability have great potential application prospect in water treatment.