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Highly Active Hierarchical Au Nanoparticles/Cellulose@TiO₂ Prepared by Surface Charge Assisted Self-Assembly
Xuejuan Zhao1, Zelin Hua2, Long Li2
1School of Materials Engineering, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211167, China.
Abstract:
The catalyst Au/cellulose@TiO₂ with a hierarchical structure was one-pot synthesized by conventional deposition-precipitation urea method. Nanosized TiO₂ particles, instead of self-agglomeration, homogeneously dispersed on the microsized microcrystalline cellulose. Simultaneously, gold particles with particle size of about 3.4 nm were mainly well-deposited on TiO₂ particles. It was found that the surface charges of TiO₂, cellulose and gold species played a key role in assisting in selfassembling them into the hierarchical structure. p-nitrophenol hydrogenation results displayed that the catalytic activity of Au/cellulose@TiO₂ was 1.8 times and 10.9 times higher than that of Au/TiO₂ and Au/cellulose, respectively. The improvement in catalytic performance of Au/cellulose@TiO₂ was closely related to its hierarchical structure that influenced mass transfer of reactants and recycle of catalysts.
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