Materials Science for Energy Technologies (Jan 2020)
Fabricating gold nanorattles impregnated chitosan film for catalytic application
Abstract
Herein, we fabricate a chitosan film impregnated with gold nanorattles for catalytic application. Reusable polymeric chitosan film acts as a support matrix for loading gold nanorattles (AuNRTs) for effective catalytic degradation of the environmental pollutant p-nitrophenol (p-NP) to p-aminophenol (p-AP). AuNRTs have a solid core with a porous hollow shell structure which enables effective catalysis due to the availability of large surface area arising from the porous nature of the particle. The catalytic film was prepared by mixing the AuNRTs with chitosan solution and then casted into film by pouring into a polypropylene plastic plates. The film was characterized using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, XRD and SEM which showed the clear impregnation of the AuNRTs within the film. The prepared film was able to degrade p-NP to p-AP within 72 min. The reaction followed a pseudo-first order reaction with a rate constant of 0.0468 min−1 for the first cycle. Further, reusability of AuNRT chitosan catalytic film was evaluated by using the prepared film for the same reaction and it was found that the more than 90% of p-NP got degraded even in the 7th cycle of the reaction with a slight decrease in the reaction rate constant. Thus, the prepared film demonstrates its applicability in chemical catalysis for degrading p-NP and reusability for up to seven cycles without losing much activity.
