A facile synthesis of Cu-CuO-Ag nanocomposite and their hydrogenation reduction of p-nitrophenol

In this study, a nanocatalyst of Cu-CuO-Ag was synthesized by a facile chemical reduction method. By varying the amount of metallic precursor, different compositions of the Cu-CuO-Ag nanocomposite were synthesized, and their structural and morphological characterizations were carried out. The nanocomposites were used for the hydrogenation reduction of p-nitrophenol to p-aminophenol using sodium borohydride as the reducing agent. The catalytic activity of Cu-CuO-Ag nanocomposite had a catalytic activity that was 4.5 fold higher than that of Cu-CuO nanocomposite. The kinetic studies revealed pseudo-first order kinetics and the reduction reaction completed within four minutes. The maximum rate constant value of 0.565 min(-1) was obtained for the composite prepared with a copper precursor to silver precursor ratio of 16:1. The developed Cu-CuO-Ag nanocomposite also showed excellent catalytic stability. There was no noticeable decrease in catalytic activity even after four cycles. Furthermore, we optimized the catalyst amount required for the reduction reaction.