Transition Metal Doping for Sustainable Catalysis: Enhancing the Structural and Catalytic Properties of Graphene Oxide Integrated BSA-stabilized CdSe Nanoparticles

The research work presented here describes the influence of transition metal (Fe, Ni, Co) doping in graphene oxide (GO) integrated biomolecule stabilized CdSe nanoparticles on the structural and catalytic properties. The CdSe and doped CdSe were synthesised by simple chemical co-precipitation method. These molecules were stabilized by bovine serum albumin (BSA) in order to overcome the agglomeration and achieve water dispersibility. The synthesized molecules were then made into composites by integrating with graphene oxide (GO) and characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), UV-Vis spectroscopy, Fourier transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Further, the synthesized materials were tested for catalytic reduction of p-nitro aniline into p-phenylenediamine under the optimized conditions. These results indicated that doping of cobalt has notable influence on the structural and catalytic properties. About 98.73% of conversion was achieved in the reduction reaction on using GO/Cobalt doped BSA-CdSe as the catalyst.