Abstract
Porous gold with well-defined shape and size have aroused extensive research enthusiasm due to their prominent properties in various applications. However, it is still a great challenge to explore a simple, green, and low-cost route to fabricate porous gold with a “clean” surface. In this work, porous worm-like Au has been easily synthesized in a one-step procedure from aqueous solution at room temperature under the action of ionic liquid tetrapropylammonium glycine ([N3333][Gly]). It is shown that the as-prepared porous worm-like Au has the length from 0.3 to 0.6 μm and the width of approximately 100–150 nm, and it is composed of lots of small nanoparticles about 6–12 nm in diameter. With rhodamine 6G (R6G) as a probe molecule, porous worm-like Au displays remarkable surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensitivity (detection limit is lower than 10−13 M), and extremely high reproducibility (average relative standard deviations is less than 2%). At the same time, owing to significantly high specific surface area, various pore sizes and plenty of crystal defects, porous worm-like Au also exhibits excellent catalytic performance in the reduction of nitroaromatics, such as p-nitrophenol and p-nitroaniline, which can be completely converted within only 100 s and 150 s, respectively. It is expected that the as-prepared porous worm-like Au with porous and self-supported structures will also present the encouraging advances in electrocatalysis, sensing, and many others.
Highlights
Due to their various pore structures, large specific surface area, many transfer channels, and large number of active and accessible sites [1,2], porous Au have been paid increasing attention in recent years and found potentials in diverse areas including catalysis [3,4], sensing [5] and surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) [6,7]
Morphology of Au products was observed on a SU8010 field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), and the element content was determined through an energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy attached to the SU8010 FESEM (Hitachi, Tokyo, Japan)
[N3333][Gly] was used to direct the growth and assembly of porous worm-like Au, and its influence on product shapes and structures was studied in detail
Summary
Due to their various pore structures, large specific surface area, many transfer channels, and large number of active and accessible sites [1,2], porous Au have been paid increasing attention in recent years and found potentials in diverse areas including catalysis [3,4], sensing [5] and surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) [6,7]. Feng et al [30] synthesized AuPt nanodendrites under the stabilization of 1-aminopropyl-3-methylimidazole bromide ([APmim]Br) He et al [31] fabricated a Pt cube by using 1-butyl-3-methylimidazole tetrafluoroborate ([C4mim][BF4]) to reduce the reduction rate of Pt(acac) and control the formation of the cube morphology. We obtained various Au nanostructures assisted by several functionalized ILs. It was found that ILs and the functional groups in ILs had significant effects on product morphology and SERS responses [32]. It was found that ILs and the functional groups in ILs had significant effects on product morphology and SERS responses [32] These results encourage us to further explore new routes involving ILs for the fabrication of nanomaterials with well-defined structures and excellent performance. The as-prepared porous worm-like Au demonstrated outstanding SERS response and excellent catalytic performance for the reduction of nitroaromatics in water
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