Metallic nanoparticles (NPs) are well established as heterogeneous catalysts and a subject of focus due to their promising use in catalysis.1-3 Herein, we present a kinetic study of reduction reactions on Ag, Au, Pt metallic and Ag-Pt bimetallic alloy NPs that were synthesized in aqueous suspensions without using any stabilizer. Owing to the synergistic and alloying effects between the metals in Ag-Pt alloy NPs, those have shown superior catalytic performance in the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol by NaBH4. In the bulk, due to the large immiscibility between Ag and Pt, an alloy has not been observed, whereas in the nanosized regime, the prepared Ag-Pt alloy NPs have not only shown higher catalytic activity than their mono-metals, but also eliminated the induction time which was observed in the pure Ag NPs case. Kinetics studies of hydrogen evolution on various metallic and bimetallic NPs were conducted in order to follow the reduction mechanism of the fastest Ag-Pt catalyst. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) and X-Ray powder diffraction (XRD) studies show that the silver-rich Ag-Pt alloy NPs have a spherical linked shape and confirm the structure of an alloy with the size of ~4.0 nm. The highest catalytic activity was gained specifically in one particular metal ratio composition of Ag-Pt alloy NPs with a relatively low content of Pt which also presented those as low-cost catalysts.
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