Comparative study between homo-metallic & hetero-metallic nanostructures based agar in catalytic degradation of dyes

Herein, comparison between eco-friendly homo-metallic (Ag) and hetero-metallic (AgAu and Ag-Au-Pd) nanostructures in catalysis was studied. The homo-metallic and hetero-metallic nanostructures were greenly synthesized using Agar as nano-generator. The sequential reduction of metal ions to give homo- and hetero-metallic nanostructures was initially confirmed via UV-Visible spectra. Tracking of transmission electron microscope and zetasizer data showed that, all the produced nanostructures were well-dispersed and spherical in shape. Small-sized AgNPs with mean size of 9.1 nm were enlarged to 23.7 nm for AgAu bimetallic nanostructure. While, trimetallic nanoshells of Ag-Au-Pd was diminished to be 13.6 nm. The FT-IR and 13CNMR spectral analyses were detected to investigate the reaction mechanism for synthesis of nanostructures. The catalytic performance of the synthesized nanostructures in degradation of methylene blue and methyl orange dyes was a strongly correlated to the composition of nanostructures. Half time of methylene blue and methyl orange degradation was diminished from 45.90 and 47.15 to 0.97 and 0.69 min by using trimetallic nanostructures as a catalyst, respectively. The current strategy can present an environmentally benign and valuable methodology for fabrication of hetero-metallic nanostructures with desirable size and have efficient catalytic activity.