Morphology design and synthesis of magnetic microspheres as highly efficient reusable catalyst for organic dyes

Abstract

Precise synthesis of magnetic particles that surface chemistry spanning is critically needed for the fundamental research. We reported a new seed emulsion interfacial polymerization, which precisely synthesized magnetic polymer particles spanning from sulfonated porous magnetic microspheres to topology structured magnetic microspheres (TPMMs). By varying the degree of cross-linking, the type of monomer, several types of magnetic polymer particles with different morphology were obtained. Then silver nanoparticles (NPs) were precipitated in situ on the surface of topology structured magnetic microspheres as catalyst (Ag@TPMMs). To estimate the catalytic activity, the reduction experiments of Rhodamine B (RhB) and 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) were studied. These toxic dyes can be reduced in a very short time, and the apparent rate coeffcients of RhB and 4-NP were 0.03156 s−1 and 0.0286 s−1 respectively, which indicated that they had a good catalytic performance. When the catalyst was used 5 cycles, the catalytic activity of catalyst was still high. The potential applications of TPMMs will be very useful in labeling, tracking, protein separation and other biomedical fields.