English abstract
Inorganic oxides such as, alumina, ceria, zirconia and zinc oxide are materials of INC e choice as supports for wide range of heterogeneous catalysts due to their robust electrical, mechanical and material properties. It's an established fact that the activities for heterogeneous catalysts are proportional to the surface area of the support materials. Zinc oxide (ZnO nanowires, nanorods and nanotubes have received increased attention due to their remarkable physical and chemical properties. These nanostructures with enhanced surface area serve as efficient, robust and thermally stable catalyst supports. 1-D ZnO nanorods were epitaxially grown under unshaken and shaken conditions on seeded glass substrates by a low temperature hydrothermal process. For shaken condition, the overall density of ZnO nanorods was increased by 25% compared to unshaken condition. Subsequently, platinum (Pt) nanoparticles were grown directly on the ZnO nanorod supports by using potassium hexachloroplatinate (IV) (K2PtCle) as a source of Pt ions and their a source growth dynamics were studied. As expected, the deposition of Pt nanoparticles on
ZnO nanorods grown under shaken condition increased by 25% leading to increased catalyst activity. The ZnO support and ZnO-Pt catalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron dispersive spectroscopy (EDX), UV-visible spectroscopy and inductively couple plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). The catalytic U activities of ZnO supported materials were evaluated for hydride transfer reactions using cyclohexanol as a model reaction. The catalytic reaction was optimized for time, temperature and solvent to give an optimized cyclohexanon to cyclohexanol conversion of 92% for the PuZnO catalyst
