Green preparation of hollow mesoporous silica nanosphere inside-loaded gold nanoparticles and the catalytic activity

In this work, an active nano-catalyst with gold nanoparticles loaded in hollow mesoporous silica nanospheres (HMSNs/Au) was prepared by a one-pot sol-gel method, in which gold ions were loaded in hollow mesoporous silica spheres followed by sodium alginate reduction. The characterization of the HMSNs/Au were determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), N-2 adsorption-desorption isotherms (BET). The high catalytic activity of HMSNs/Au, denoted as apparent turn-over frequency (TOF), was detected by UV-Vis spectrophotometer for the catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol (74.5 h(-1)) and 2-nitrophenol (108.7 h(-1)) in the presence of sodium borohydride solution due to the small gold nanoparticles size and overall exposure of active sites. It is expected that this ecofriendly approach to prepare inorganic composited nanoparticles as high active catalysts based on hollow mesoporous materials was a promising platform for loading noble metal nanoparticles.