Preparation of ultrafine Cu1.5Mn1.5O4 spinel nanoparticles and its application in p-nitrophenol reduction

Abstract

In this work, ultrafine Cu1.5Mn1.5O4 spinel nanoparticles were successfully synthesized by a sol–gel method combined with two complexing agents, which was firstly employed in the reductive transformation from p-nitrophenol into p-aminophenol. The effect of calcination temperature on the crystal phase and microstructure of Cu1.5Mn1.5O4 nanoparticles was investigated in this article. It was found that Cu1.5Mn1.5O4 nanoparticles with pure spinel phase can be obtained at 500 °C with the help of EDTA acid–citric acid complexing agents. Below 500 °C, there exists some Mn2O3 impure phase. SEM characterization indicated that the particle size of the spinel Cu1.5Mn1.5O4 rapidly increases above 600 °C. The catalytic experimental results show that the Cu1.5Mn1.5O4 nanoparticles prepared at 500 °C exhibit the highest catalytic activity which is even superior to some precious metal catalysts. With the calcination temperature increasing, the catalytic activity of Cu1.5Mn1.5O4 spinel nanoparticles gradually degrades which can be ascribed to the particle size growth of Cu1.5Mn1.5O4. It can also be observed that all the oxide samples, namely CuO, Mn2O3 and Cu1.5Mn1.5O4, possess certain catalytic ability for the transformation from p-nitrophenol into p-aminophenol. However, the catalytic activity of Cu1.5Mn1.5O4 spinel nanoparticles is obviously higher than CuO and Mn2O3. Especially, Mn2O3 alone has very poor catalytic activity in the reduction of p-nitrophenol.