One-pot green synthesis of silver/iron oxide composite nanoparticles for 4-nitrophenol reduction

Silver/iron oxide composite nanoparticles have been synthesized successfully via a facile one-pot green route by the use of l-arginine, which created an aqueous solution of about pH 10 and acted as a reducing agent for the successive formation of iron oxide and Ag nanoparticles. The product was characterized to be silver-coated iron oxide and iron oxide hydroxide composite nanoparticles with a mean diameter of about 13.8 ± 3.0 nm and 8.53% of Ag in weight. It exhibited good catalytic activity for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol with sodium borohydride. The reduction reaction followed the pseudo-first-order kinetics. The corresponding rate constants increased with the increases of temperature and catalyst amount but decreased with the increase of initial 4-NP concentration, revealing an activation energy of 28.2 kJ/mol and a diffusion controlled mechanism. In addition, this product had quite good stability. No significant activity loss was observed after reuse for 5 cycles.