A facile synthesis of Cu–CuO–Ag nanocomposite and their hydrogenation reduction of p-nitrophenol

Abstract

In this study, a nanocatalyst of Cu–CuO–Ag was synthesized by a facile chemical reduction method. By varying the amount of metallic precursor, different compositions of the Cu–CuO–Ag nanocomposite were synthesized, and their structural and morphological characterizations were carried out. The nanocomposites were used for the hydrogenation reduction of p-nitrophenol to p-aminophenol using sodium borohydride as the reducing agent. The catalytic activity of Cu–CuO–Ag nanocomposite had a catalytic activity that was 4.5 fold higher than that of Cu–CuO nanocomposite. The kinetic studies revealed pseudo-first order kinetics and the reduction reaction completed within four minutes. The maximum rate constant value of 0.565 min−1 was obtained for the composite prepared with a copper precursor to silver precursor ratio of 16:1. The developed Cu–CuO–Ag nanocomposite also showed excellent catalytic stability. There was no noticeable decrease in catalytic activity even after four cycles. Furthermore, we optimized the catalyst amount required for the reduction reaction.