The formation and catalytic activity of silver nanoparticles in aqueous polyacrylate solutions

Abstract

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have been synthesized in the presence of polyacrylate through the reduction of silver nitrate by sodium borohydride in aqueous solution. The AgNO₃ and polyacrylate carboxylate group concentrations were kept constant at 2.0 × 10⁻⁴ and 1.0 × 10⁻² mol∙L⁻¹, respectively, while the ratio of [NaBH₄]/[AgNO₃] was varied from 1 to 100. The ultra-violet-visible plasmon resonance spectra of these solutions were found to vary with time prior to stabilizing after 27 d, consistent with changes of AgNP size and distribution within the polyacrylate ensemble occurring. These observations, together with transmission electron microscopic results, show this rearrangement to be greatest among the samples at the lower ratios of [NaBH₄]/[AgNO₃] used in the preparation, whereas those at the higher ratios showed a more even distribution of smaller AgNP. All ten of the AgNP samples, upon a one thousand-fold dilution, catalyze the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol in the temperature range 283.2–303.2 K with a substantial induction time being observed at the lower temperatures.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

silver nanoparticles / polyacrylates / catalysis / mechanism / sodium borohydride

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Acknowledgement

We gratefully acknowledge the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51403062 and 51273063), the China Scholarship Council, the Australian Research Council, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2013M541485), 111 Project Grant (B08021), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and the Open Project of Engineering Research Center of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering of Xinjiang Bingtuan (2015BTRC001) for support of this work.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11705-016-1584-0 and is accessible for authorized users.

Funding

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2016 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg