Green planting silver nanoparticles on Populus fibers and the catalytic application

Preparation and application of ecofriendly materials is becoming an urgent topic. In this work, a green approach for producing silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) embedded on natural Populus fibers (PF) was developed based on hydrothermal synthesis using polyamidoxime (PAO)-functionalized fibers (PF-g-PAO). Throughout the production process, PAO acts as a trapping, stabilizing, and reducing agent for AgNPs formation without involvement of any additional reagents. The effects of the hydrothermal synthesis temperature and PF-g-PAO immersion duration in silver ion solution on AgNPs formation were studied based on the morphology of the PF-g-PAO/AgNPs composites, and their application in catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectrophotometry. Under the optimal reaction condition, AgNPs with average size of 36 nm were embedded on the PF surface with high silver content (15.6 wt%), exhibiting high catalytic activity (2.40 s(-1) g(-1)) and reusability (>5 cycles) in reduction of 4-NP to 4-aminophenol (4-AP). More importantly, the use of the renewable resource cellulose in this work represents a sustainable feature to reduce manufacturing cost and environmental impact. [GRAPHICS] .