Syntheses of magnetic blackberry-like Ni@Cu@Pd nanoparticles for efficient catalytic reduction of organic pollutants

Abstract

Organic dyes and nitrophenols in the textile industry are wastewater pollutants. In order to develop an efficient nanocatalysts to remove organic pollutants in wastewater, the trimetallic Ni@Cu@Pd nanoparticles (Ni@Cu@Pd NPs) with a blackberry-like structure was successfully prepared by a seed mediated growth method for the first time. The blackberry-like structure and the presence of Ni, Cu and Pd have been confirmed through TEM, SEM, EDS and XPS characterizations. Owing to the charge interaction between metal species along with blackberry-like structure, trimetallic Ni@Cu@Pd NPs delivered a record high catalytic activity toward the reduction of rhodamine B (RhB), with an apparent rate constant of 7.20 min−1. Ni@Cu@Pd NPs also exhibited high activity for the catalytic reduction of methylene blue (MB) and 4-nitrophenol (4-NP). Moreover, the Ni@Cu@Pd NPs catalyst showed excellent stability and reusability.