ARTICLE pubs.acs.org/IC
Synthesis of Gold Nanoparticle Catalysts Based on a New Water-Soluble Ionic Polymer Ilaria Biondi, Gabor Laurenczy, and Paul J. Dyson* Institut des Sciences et Ingenierie Chimiques, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
bS Supporting Information ABSTRACT: A new water-soluble methyl-imidazolium-based ionic polymer was synthesized by ring-opening metathesis polymerization that was subsequently used to prepare aqueous gold nanoparticle solutions which were characterized by UV vis spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The aqueous gold nanoparticle solutions were employed as catalysts in the reduction of pnitrophenol and in the hydrogenation of cinnamaldehyde and were found to exhibit excellent activity under mild conditions.
’ INTRODUCTION Gold in the bulk metallic state is generally regarded to be inactive in heterogeneously catalyzed reactions.1 In 1987, however, Haruta et al. discovered that small gold nanoparticles (GNPs
