Pd Nanoparticles Decorated on Ionic Liquid Modified Magnetite Nanoparticles as a Recyclable and Active Nanocatalyst for Reduction of Nitro Compounds and Degradation of Organic Dyes

Abstract The development of new technologies for the efficient degradation of toxic organic pollutants from water resources has received great attention. In this study, we described an effective method for the preparation of Pd nanoparticles (NPs) decorated on nitrogen rich ionic liquid (IL) modified magnetic nanoparticles and its application as the green and recoverable heterogeneous catalyst in the reductive degradation of organic dyes and reduction of nitro compounds. The Fe 3 O 4 /SiO 2 −IL−Pd nanocatalyst was characterized by several techniques namely, FT‐IR, FE‐SEM, EDX‐ elemental mapping, XRD, TEM, XPS, TGA and VSM. The Fe 3 O 4 /SiO 2 ‐IL−Pd nanocatalyst was applied for the efficient reduction of structurally different nitroarenes, methyl orange (MO), methylene blue (MB) and methyl red (MR) in aqueous media using NaBH 4 as reducing agent at room temperature. Using this catalyst nitroarenes were reduced to corresponding amines very efficiently and organic dyes reduced quantitatively under short reaction times. The catalyst can be recovered and recycled for at least ten runs without a notable decrease in the activity.