Bifunctional sodium tartrate as stabilizer and reductant for the facile synthesis of Fe3O4/Ag nanocomposites with catalytic activity

In this paper, we have demonstrated a facile and environmentally friendly approach to prepare Fe3O4/Ag nanocomposites (Fe3O4/Ag NPs) by a two-step method. During the preparation process, neither any other reducing agents nor toxic organic solvents were employed. Firstly, Fe3O4 nanoparticles were prepared by co-precipitation and stabilized with the sodium tartrate. Secondly, Fe3O4/Ag composite nanoparticles were synthesized by a simple reflux method, which once more using sodium tartrate as a green reducing agent to reduce the AgNO3 to Ag NPs. The as-prepared NPs were characterized by UV-vis spectrometer, dynamic light scattering (DLS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). Both the sodium tartrate stabilized Fe3O4 nanoparticles (Fe3O4@ST NPs) and Fe3O4/Ag NPs showed well dispersed in water and had high superparamagnetism at room temperature, which can be quickly actuated by a small household magnet. More importantly, the Fe3O4/Ag NPs exhibited excellent catalytic properties both in efficiency and recyclability for the degradation of methyl orange (MO) in the presence of H2O2 and the composition was unchanged after 5 cycle times.