Silver/Titanium nanoparticles encapsulated microgel for catalytic reduction

Abstract

Organic dyes and nitro compounds have become major pollutants that effect our ecosystem and hazardous to living things. Bimetallic nanoparticles loaded with microgel catalytic system was synthesized for the reduction of these pollutants. Poly (N-isopropylacrylamide-co-methacrylic acid) p(NIPAM-MAAc) microgel was synthesized by free radical precipitation method and latterly silver (Ag) and titanium (Ti) nanoparticles were loaded inside the microgel by in-situ chemical method. Different techniques were used to characterize the hybrid microgel such as Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, dynamic light scattering as well as UV-visible spectroscopy. The average size of hybrid microgels were observed 139 nm with the Polydispersity index of 0.313 by DLS. The smaller value of PDI indicates that nanoparticles were homogeneously dispersed inside the microgel. The synthesized hybrid microgels were used as catalyst for reduction of various compounds such as, 2,4-dinitrophenol (2,4-DNP), congo red (CR), 4-nitrophenol (4-NP), methyl orange (MO), methyl red (MR), 2-nitrophenol (2-NP), crystal violet (CV), 3-nitrophenol (3-NP), methyl blue (MB) and eriochrome black T (EBT) in the presences of NaBH4 reducing agent. Apparent rate constant of CV, CR and EBT 0.3234, 0.2315 and 0.1697 min-1 were observed highest among other substrate.