Hydrothermal Synthesis of Novel Magnetic Plate-Like Bi2O2CO3/CoFe2O4 Hybrid Nanostructures and Their Catalytic Performance for the Reduction of Some Aromatic Nitrocompounds.

Novel magnetically separable Bi2O2CO3/CoFe2O4 nanocomposites were fabricated by a feasible hydrothermal route. Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), and N2 adsorption-desorption analysis were employed to examine the structure, morphology, particle size, phase composition, optical and magnetic properties of the as-synthesized nanocomposites. The results of the findings showed demonstrated the successful coupling of spherical CoFe2O4 nanoparticles and plate-like Bi2O2CO3 nanostructures. The catalytic performance of magnetic Bi2O2CO3/CoFe2O4 nanocamposites was evaluated in the reduction of some aromatic nitrocompounds such as nitrophenols and nitroanilines by using sodium borohydride (NaBH4) aqueous solution at room temperature. The Bi2O2CO3/CoFe2O4 nanocamposite with 30 %wt. CoFe2O4 exhibited the best performance in the reduction of aromatic nitrocompounds with 100% conversion into the corresponding amino compounds within 15-30 min with rate constant of 0.10-0.24 min-1. The effect of catalyst dosage was also investigated on the efficiency of reduction process. Furthermore, magnetic Bi2O2CO3/CoFe2O4 nanocomposite could be easily removed by an external magnet from the reaction system.