The preparation of carbon-encapsulated Fe/Co nanoparticles and their novel applications as bifunctional catalysts to promote the redox reaction for p-nitrophenol

As a common organic pollutant in industrial and agricultural wastewater, p-Nitrophenol (p-NP) is difficult to be degraded naturally. Though, various methods have been developed for degradation of p-NP, the utilization of catalysts to electrochemically degrade p-NP became a novel effective way. In this article, two magnetic nanoparticles (carbon-encapsulated iron, Fe/C; carbon-encapsulated cobalt, Co/C) were prepared. Through a series of physical phase characterization, we found that the average dimension of the prepared magnetic nanoparticles arrived at 60 nm for Fe/C and 80 nm for Co/C, and within such small dimensions, the prepared nanoparticles might have some remarkable catalytic characters in electrochemical degradation of p-NP. Therefore, two novel types of Fe/C and Co/C modified glassy carbon electrodes were fabricated to investigate their catalytic activity for p-NP degradation. In our results, both of the two modified electrodes showed favorable stability and excellent electro-catalytic activity for p-NP degradation. In addition, two modified electrodes also exhibited favorable electro-catalytic reductive ability for p-NP. The electrochemical reactions on the surface of the two modified electrodes were all diffusion controlled processes. Therefore, Fe/C and Co/C were excellent bifunctional catalysts which could be considered as a practical way to be applied in industrial hydrogenation and oxidative degradation of organic compounds.