Highly ordered mesoporous silica film nanocomposites containing gold nanoparticles for the catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol

We report that transparent mesostructured silica/gold nanocomposite materials with an interpore distance of 4.1 nm, as-synthesized from a templated sol–gel synthesis method using discotic trinuclear gold(I) pyrazolate complex, were successfully utilized for the fabrication of thin film mesoporous silica nanocomposites containing gold nanoparticles. The material exhibited a highly ordered hexagonal structure when subjected to a thermal hydrogen reduction treatment at 210 °C. In contrast, when the material was subjected to calcination as a heat treatment from 190 to 450 °C, the thin film nanocomposites showed an intense d(100) X-ray diffraction peak. Moreover, gold nanoparticles inside the thin film nanocomposites were confirmed by the presence of the d(111) diffraction peak at 2θ = 38.2°, a surface plasmon resonance peak between 500–580 nm, and the spherical shape observed in the transmission electron microscope images, as well as the visual change in color from pink to purple. Interestingly, by simply dipping the material into a reaction solution of 4-nitrophenol at room temperature, the highly ordered structure of the as-fabricated silica/gold nanoparticle thin film composite after thermal hydrogen reduction at 210 °C resulted in an improved catalytic activity for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol compared to the material calcined at 250 °C. Such catalytic activity is due to the presence of gold nanoparticles of smaller size in the silicate channels of the highly ordered mesoporous film nanocomposites.