Nanocomposite Thin Films as Reusable catalyst

Efforts are underway to find suitable catalysts those are active and stable, easy to handle and separate from the reaction mixture and reusable for several cycles. In particular, for industrial application, catalyst recovery and recycling are very important issues when costly metals are involved. Intensive work is ongoing to develop mesoporous transition metal oxides (as-such and doped) to enhance the catalytic activities because of their high surface area and continuous 3D pore structure. However catalyst poisoning, separation of catalyst after the reaction, reusability of the catalysts, etc., are known problems. Mesoporous film hosts could be one of the suitable candidates to avoid these problems. In this aim we successfully developed highly stable mesoporous alumina films (2-3 micron thick) on glass substrate1 and used them as universal support for a series of metal, metal oxide and semiconductor nanostructures for possible applications in catalysis.2-10 This method is reproducible and have been applied for a large variety of noble metals (Au,2 Pd,3 Pt,4 Au-Pd5 etc) as well as for metal oxides (PdO,3 CoAl2O46 etc.). These nanocomposite films have been used as efficient reusable catalyst in different electron transfer reactions. In addition to the regular shaped tiny nanoparticles (NPs), we also synthesized several complex shaped7 mono- and bi-metallic NPs and decorated them on the surface of a polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) film for catalytic applications.8 The development of bismuth oxyhalide/alumina composite films and their use as efficient visible light driven photocatalyst will also be discussed.9,10

 

References:

1. A. Dandapat and G. De, J. Mater. Chem. 2010, 20, 3890.

2. D. Jana, A. Dandapat and G. De, Langmuir 2010, 26, 12177.

3. A. Dandapat, D. Jana and G. De, Appl. Catal. A: Gen. 2011, 396, 34.

4. A. Dandapat, D. Jana and G. De, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2009, 1, 833.

5. D. Jana, A. Danadapat and G. De, J. Phys. Chem. C 2009, 113, 9101.

6. A. Dandapat and G. De, ACS Appl. Mater. Interface 2012, 4, 228.

7. Y. Huang, A. Dandapat, D. Kim, Nanoscale, 2014, 6, 6478.

8. Y. Rong, A. Dandapat, Y. Huang, Y. Sasson et al. RSC Adv. 2015 (Under review).

9. H. Gnayem, A. Dandapat and Y. Sasson, Chem. Eur. J. 2015, DOI:10.1002/ chem.201503900

10. A. Dandapat, H. Gnayem and Y. Sasson, Chem. Commun. 2015 (Under revision).