Green Fabrication of Effective Silver Loading on Fishbone-Derived Hydroxyapatite: A Robust Catalyst for 4-Nitrophenol Reduction

While increasing the metal loading in the catalyst system could generate more sites for the reaction to take place, lowering the active content is also an efficient strategy to improve the catalytic performance, as well as to lower the catalyst’s price in case of designing noble metal-based catalyst. Herein, a series of low weight percentage Ag-based catalyst anchored on tuna fishbone-derived hydroxyapatite support was synthesized with Jasminum subtriplinerve Blume leaves extract and evaluated in the 4-nitrophenol reduction by NaBH₄. The influence of the reaction conditions (catalyst dosage and 4-nitrophenol/NaBH₄ molar ratio) on the catalyst’s performance was also investigated. The characteristics of the catalyst were investigated with several techniques, including XRD, EDS, SEM, HR-TEM, FTIR, and isotherm N₂ adsorption. The greener synthesis route generated a nanocatalyst with a mean AgNPs diameter of 10.3 nm observed in HR-TEM image with Ag(111) crystal planes exposure. Though the fishbone-originated hydroxyapatite induced a catalyst’s lower specific surface area (23.9 m²/g) compared to the chemical-derived one, the studied catalyst still exhibited high performance in the conversion of 4-nitrophenol with NaBH₄ with a high reaction rate constant value of 1.937 min⁻¹.