Preparation of highly dispersed Ru nanoparticles supported on amine-functionalized magnetic nanoparticles: Efficient catalysts for the reduction of nitro compounds

Abstract A supported ruthenium (Ru) nanoparticle on amino-functionalized Fe3O4 (Fe3O4/NH2/Ru) was successfully prepared by a novel and simple one-pot template-free method combined with a metal adsorption-reduction procedure. The characterization results show that the introduced amino group (1,6-hexanediamine) can effectively stabilize the Ru nanoparticles and allow the particles to maintain a narrow size distribution, monodispersity and a regular morphology. Fe3O4/NH2/Ru exhibits excellent catalytic activity for the transfer hydrogenation of nitro compounds by the use of NaBH4 as the hydrogen donor. The higher activity of this catalyst was attributed to the higher dispersion and smaller particle size of Ru nanoparticles, as observed from the characterization results. Moreover, the catalyst can be easily recovered by an external magnetic field, recycled five times and reused without any loss of activity.