Abstract
Non-noble metal nanoparticles are becoming more and more important in catalysis recently. Cu/CuO nanoclusters on highly ordered TiO2 nanotube arrays are successfully developed by a surfactant-free photoreduction method. This non-noble metal Cu/CuO-TiO2 catalyst exhibits excellent catalytic activity and stability for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP) with the presence of sodium borohydride (NaBH4). The rate constant of this low-cost Cu/CuO based catalyst is even higher than that of the noble metal nanoparticles decorated on the same TiO2 substrate. The conversion efficiency remains almost unchanged after 7 cycles of recycling. The recycle process of this Cu/CuO-TiO2 catalyst supported by Ti foil is very simple and convenient compared with that of the common powder catalysts. This catalyst also exhibited great catalytic activity to other organic dyes, such as methylene blue (MB), rhodamine B (RhB) and methyl orange (MO). This highly efficient, low-cost and easily reusable Cu/CuO-TiO2 catalyst is expected to be of great potential in catalysis in the future.
Highlights
Nitroaromatic compounds are very important industrial chemicals nowadays and are widely used in the manufacture of dyes, plastics, pesticides, and explosives[1]
scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) characterizations were firstly carried out to investigate the morphologies and compositions of Cu/CuO-TiO2 catalysts fabricated in different concentration of CuCl2
Increasing the concentration of CuCl2 to 0.1 mM led to the formation of larger Cu/CuO nanoclusters with average size of 158 nm consisted of small nanoparticles with size of 50~80 nm
Summary
Nitroaromatic compounds are very important industrial chemicals nowadays and are widely used in the manufacture of dyes, plastics, pesticides, and explosives[1]. In-situ surfactant-free photoreduction method was carried out for the decoration of “clean” Cu/CuO nanoclusters on top of the ordered TiO2 NT arrays[27,28].
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