Mussel-inspired immobilization of Au on bare and graphene-wrapped Ni nanoparticles toward highly efficient and easily recyclable catalysts

Bimetallic nanocatalysts have been gaining huge research attention in the heterogeneous catalysis community recently owing to their tunable properties and multifunctional characteristics. In this work, we fabricated a bimetallic core–shell nanocomposite catalyst by employing a mussel-inspired strategy for immobilizing gold nanoparticles (AuNP) on the surface of nickel nanoparticles (NiNP). NiNPs obtained from the reduction of Ni(II) were first coated with polydopamine to provide the anchoring sites towards the robust immobilization of AuNPs. The as-synthesized nanocomposite (Ni–PD–Au) exhibited outstanding catalytic activity while reducing methylene blue (MB) and 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) yielding rate constants 13.11 min−1 and 4.21 min−1, respectively, outperforming the catalytic efficiency of its monometallic counterparts and other similar reported catalysts by large margins. The superior catalytic efficiency of the Ni–PD–Au was attributed to the well-known synergistic effect, which was experimentally investigated and compared with prior reports. Similar bio-inspired immobilization of AuNPs was also applied on graphene-wrapped NiNPs (Ni-G) instead of bare NiNPs to synthesize another composite catalyst (Ni-G–PD–Au), which yet again exhibited synergistic catalytic activity. A comparative study between the two nanocomposites suggested that Ni–PD–Au excelled in catalytic activity but Ni-G–PD–Au provided noteworthy stability showing ∼100% efficiency over 17 repeated cycles. However, along with excellent synergistic performance, both nanocomposites demonstrated high magnetization and thermal stability up to 350 °C ascertaining their easy separation and sustainability for high-temperature applications, respectively.