Development and application of engineered nanomaterials to a variety of industrial and medical fields have progressed rapidly. Metal nanoparticles are predominantly desirable for their enhanced catalytic properties due to their high surface area-to-volume ratio as a result of their size reduction. Incorporating metal nanoparticles into another nanomaterial creates a nanocomposite that exhibits novel and better properties. There is a search for a stable flexible substrate that can contain the aqueous reaction of metal reduction for nanoparticle formation. In this study, we developed nanocomposite mats that are comprised of hydrogel nanofibers of polyelectrolytes poly(acrylic acid) and poly(allylamine hydrochloride) and loaded metal nanoparticles. The nanofibers are fabricated by the electrospinning technique, and subsequently immersed into a metal salt solution to absorb the metal ions. The metal ions within the fibers are then chemically reduced to form metal nanoparticles inside and on the surface of the nanofibers. Redox studies on various organic compounds were conducted to observe the catalytic reduction by the nanocomposites. The proposed fabrication process is advantageous in terms of simplicity, controllability and versatility.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-7862 |
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| Creators | Li Sip, Yuen Yee |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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