| Sumario: | A green, photochemical approach for the liquid-phase synthesis of carbon nanomaterial-supported silver nanoparticles is proposed. The method is based on irradiating a colloidal dispersion containing the carbon nanomaterial, a metal precursor and an environmentally friendly reducing agent (bioreductant) with UV light at room temperature. Two representative carbon materials have been used, namely platelet-type graphite nanofibers and graphene oxide. The experimental conditions that afford the photochemical growth of the nanoparticles on each carbon support are also investigated and discussed. In addition, the resulting carbon–silver nanoparticle hybrids are demonstrated to be notably effective catalysts for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol with NaBH4. Particularly, the graphene oxide-based samples were seen to exhibit exceptional catalytic activity towards such reaction. Finally, it is also shown that with a suitable choice of bioreductant the present UV approach can afford highly reduced graphene oxide samples comparable to those attained with well-known, efficient chemical reductants (e. g., hydrazine at ∼100 °C), thus constituting an attractive room temperature alternative to such reduction methods.
|
|---|
