Polyethyleneimine-Oleic Acid Micelles-Stabilized Palladium Nanoparticles as Highly Efficient Catalyst to Treat Pollutants with Enhanced Performance

Water soluble organic molecular pollution endangers human life and health. It becomes necessary to develop highly stable noble metal nanoparticles without aggregation in solution to improve their catalytic performance in treating pollution. Polyethyleneimine (PEI)-based stable micelles have the potential to stabilize noble metal nanoparticles due to the positive charge of PEI. In this study, we synthesized the amphiphilic PEI-oleic acid molecule by acylation reaction. Amphiphilic PEI-oleic acid assembled into stable PEI-oleic acid micelles with a hydrodynamic diameter of about 196 nm and a zeta potential of about 34 mV. The PEI-oleic acid micelles-stabilized palladium nanoparticles (PO-PdNPs(n)) were prepared by the reduction of sodium tetrachloropalladate using NaBH(4) and the palladium nanoparticles (PdNPs) were anchored in the hydrophilic layer of the micelles. The prepared PO-PdNPs(n) had a small size for PdNPs and good stability in solution. Noteworthily, PO-PdNPs(150) had the highest catalytic activity in reducing 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) (K(nor) = 18.53 s(−1)mM(−1)) and oxidizing morin (K(nor) = 143.57 s(−1)M(−1)) in aqueous solution than other previous catalysts. The enhanced property was attributed to the improving the stability of PdNPs by PEI-oleic acid micelles. The method described in this report has great potential to prepare many kinds of stable noble metal nanoparticles for treating aqueous pollution.