Effect of Mole Percentage of Crosslinker of Silver-poly(N- isopropylacrylamide-co-acrylic acid) Hybrid Microgels on Catalytic Reduction of Nitrobenzene

Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-acrylic acid) microgels [P(NIPAM-co-AAc)] with 2, 4, 6 and 8 mole percentage of N,N-methylene-bis-acrylamide were used as micro-reactors for the fabrication of Ag nanoparticles using the in situ reduction method. The pure and hybrid microgels were characterized by Fourier transform infrared and Ultraviolet-Visible spectroscopies. Silver-poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-acrylic acid) hybrid microgels [Ag-P(NIPAM-co-AAc)] with different crosslinker contents were used as catalysts for reduction of nitrobenzene (NB) in aqueous medium in order to investigate the effect of crosslinker content on the value of apparent rate constant (k app ). 0.041, 0.146, 0.2388 and 0.255 min -1 were found as values of k app for catalytic reduction of NB using hybrid microgels with 2, 4, 6 and 8 mole percentage of crosslinker, respectively. The effect of crosslinker feed content of hybrid microgels on catalytic activity for reduction of NB was compared to that of reduction of p-nitrophenol in aqueous medium. doi: 10.14456/WJST.2015.96