Stability of ruthenium nanoparticles synthesized by solvothermal method

One of the major obstacles to the synthesis of nanoparticles and nanocatalyst is the stability of particles. In the present study, polymer stabilized ruthenium nanoparticles were synthesized by solvothermal method using solutions of ruthenium chloride in ethylene glycol in presence of poly(N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone) (PVP) as a stabilizing agent. Stability of nanoparticles was studied by varying different parameters e.g. PVP/RuCl3 molar raio, RuCl3 concentration, reaction temperature and time and expressed in terms of particle size and size distribution. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) analysis revealed the presence of metallic clusters with a uniform size of about 20-65 nm. Dispersion destabilisation of colloidal nanoparticles was detected by Turbiscan. Polymer stabilized ruthenium nanoparticles were dispersed on gamma-alumina to prepare uniformly disperse Ru/gamma-Al2O3 catalyst by mechanical strirring and sonication. Inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), X-Ray powder diffraction (XRD), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) were used to characterize the supported catalyst. (C) 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim