Abstract:
A facile and easy thermal decomposition route for the synthesis of silver-titania
nanocomposites by silver acetate and titania has been developed. In this, two types of titania
sol-gel titania and commercial titania (with/ without calcination) were used. The silvertitania
nanocomposites were characterized by the use of various characterization techniques
such as powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), elemental
analysis (CHN analysis), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) coupled
with energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDXA), transmission electron microscopy (TEM)
and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). All the results show the presence of both silver
and titania in all the nanocomposites. Also, the catalytic activity of silver-titania
nanocomposites has been studied by the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol using
sodium borohydride as the reducing agent.
