Morphology Adjustable Silica Nanosheets for Immobilization of Gold Nanoparticles

A network of silica nanosheets composed of nanosheets of several nanometers in thickness and containing pores, whose dimensions are on the hundreds-of-nanometers scale, exhibits morphological self-adjustment upon binding of nanoparticles at its surface. The loading of nanoparticles in the nanosheets caused an obvious rearrangement of the silica nanosheet network probably due to the incomplete silica framework of the nanosheets. This self-adjustment of the structure leads to a fixing of the nanoparticles at the nanosheets' interiors. In addition, the resulting gold nanoparticle-loaded silica nanosheets show high performance for the catalytic reduction of nitrophenols with high conversion. The networked nanosheets described here may be used as a new supporting substrate for other metal nanoparticles and could be used for various catalytic processes.