In situ assembly of monodispersed Ag nanoparticles in the channels of ordered mesopolymers as a highly active and reusable hydrogenation catalyst

In this study, we report a simple in situ auto-reduction strategy for the fabrication of Ag@FDU-15 nanocomposites, in which the small sized Ag nanoparticles are monodispersed in the channels of FDU-15 ordered mesopolymers. The as-prepared Ag@FDU-15 nanocomposites were characterized by small and wide angle X-ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen sorption, thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). TEM results show that the silver nanoparticles are uniformly dispersed with a mean diameter of 5.6 ± 0.5 nm. When used as a hydrogenation catalyst, the Ag@FDU-15 nanocomposites exhibit excellent catalytic performance and reusability for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) in the presence of NaBH4.