Preparation of Cu‐W Nanoflakes and their Catalytic Performance for the Hydrogenation of 4‐Nitrophenol

Abstract

Abstract4‐Nitrophenol (4‐NP) is one of the most common organic pollutants in industrial waste waters due to its solubility and toxicity. The catalytic degradation of 4‐NP to 4‐aminophenol (4‐AP) is an economical and sustainable process, which transfers waste and toxicity to profitable materials. Fabricating metal nanoparticle based efficient heterogeneous catalysts is crucial to treating these kinds of pollutants. Here in, Cu−W nanoflakes (Cu−W NFs) with thin sheet like structure were prepared by a simple one‐pot method by using polyoxometalate as precursor. The Cu−W NFs served in hydrogenation of 4‐NP reaction as catalyst, achieved high conversion with rate constant (k) of 2.584×10−2 s−1. Notably, the sustainable catalyst Cu−W NFs exhibit no significant degradation of catalytic activity over 16 cycles, manifested good durability and high conversion (>91 %). Also, the reduction of potassium ferricyanide can also be catalyzed by Cu−W NFs with high efficiency. This work provided a concise approach for fabricating highly effective catalyst and was expected to be a potential universal method to obtain sustainable competitive catalyst for utility in treating pollution.