Articles - Green Reports

Abstract

Synthesizing metal nanostructures with uniform sizes have received great attention in recent times due to their potential applications in the fields of plasmonics, catalysis, photocatalysis and renewable energy. Indeed, the controlled synthesis of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnONPs) with uniform sizes is always a challenging task. In the present study, we introduced a simple green strategy for the preparation of ZnONPs with uniform size. Initially, poly(4-vinylbenzoic acid) (PVBA) was prepared from the polymerization of vinyl benzoic acid and used as capping agent to control the size of ZnONPs. The resultant polymer grafted ZnONPs (p-ZnONPs) was characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analysis. The successful formation of polymer grafted ZnONPs (p-ZnONPs) was confirmed by NMR and XPS analysis. The TEM results confirmed the formation of uniform size of p-ZnONPs. The average particle size of p-ZnONPs was calculated to be ~5 nm. We presume that the resultant p-ZnONPs would be useful in various catalytic and energy applications.