Highly sensitive in situ monitoring of catalytic reactions by surface enhancement Raman spectroscopy on multifunctional Fe3O4/C/Au NPs

In this study, multifunctional Fe3O4/C/Au nanoparticles (NPs), which catalytically integrated active small Au NPs with surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) active large Au NPs, were fabricated via a facile method and employed for the in situ SERS monitoring of a catalytic reaction of p-nitrothiophenol (p-NTP) to p-aminothiophenol (p-ATP). In addition, the effect of magnet power was tested and it was demonstrated that the SERS intensity of the reaction system was stronger, and the reaction proceeded more smoothly because more hot spots existed and remained the same in the magnetic field; hence, the catalytic rate could be determined.