Highly efficient and selective heterogeneous catalytic reduction of 2-nitroaniline by cerium oxide nanocatalyst under microwave irradiation

Efficient nanocatalyst with incredible performance is highly demanding in a heterogeneous catalysis system. Herein, we report the facile fabrication of uniform and highly stable Cerium Oxide nanoparticles (CeO2 NPs), through chemical precipitation method using sodium hydroxide as reducing agent. The synthesized material is characterized through highly sophisticated techniques including UV-Visible, FT-IR, SEM, AFM, XRD, and Zeta Sizer- Potential to check the particle formation, surface morphology, topography, crystalline nature, size, and surface potential. The heterogeneous catalytic performance of CeO2 NPs has been accomplished for the reduction of 2-nitroaniline from the aqueous media. The CeO2 nanocatalyst displayed excellent reusability, while the reduction in several repetitive catalytic cycles against 2-nitroaniline under optimized conditions. The CeO2 nanocatalyst shows 99.12% efficiency within 60s reaction time under a greener source of microwave radiation.