synthesis of a hybrid material based on ag nanoparticles on fe3o4-mwcnts@pei as a novel and reusable catalyst

In the last decade, silver nanoparticles (ag nps) have attracted extensive attention due to their catalytic activity in a variety of organic reactions [1]. there are several reports on preparation and catalytic activity of ag nps. however, metal-nanoparticle catalysts always encounter limitations, due to problems associated with their stability and separation from the products by traditional methods [2]. in the present research, multi-walled carbon nanotubes (mwnts) were modified with carboxylic acid functional groups (mwcnts-(cooh)n) prior to decoration with fe3o4 nanoparticles. a further modification step by polyethyleneimine (pei) resulted in fe3o4-mwcnts@pei which provided a suitable platform for coordination and in situ reduction of silver ions to obtain fe3o4-mwcnts@pei-ag nanocomposite with highly dispersed ag nanoparticles. the fe3o4-mwcnts@pei-ag hybrid material was characterized by various techniques such as fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (ft-ir), x-ray diffraction (xrd) and transmission electron microscopy (tem).