Narrow Results

In this paper, homogenous gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with a high density and a narrow size distribution were successfully fabricated on titanate nanowires (TNWs) scaffolds in the absence of organic capping agents. An ameliorated low-temperature hydrothermal method was used to prepare the TNWs scaffolds like bird's nest on the Ti substrate, and the nanowires diameter was about 30–80nm. Then, AuNPs were synthesized on the TNWs scaffolds with a deposition–precipitation urea (DPU) method. The TEM and XRD measurements indicated that well-crystallized face-centered cubic (fcc) AuNPs were homogeneously dispersed on TNWs, and AuNPs with average sizes of 2.7 nm and 4 nm were obtained, respectively for the theoretical gold loading 5 wt.% and 8 wt.%. Inspiringly, the 8%-AuNPs/TNWs catalyst could reduce 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP) within 210 s, and exhibited better catalytic reduction performance than that of 5%-AuNPs/TNWs.