Preparation, characterization and dye adsorption of Au nanoparticles/ZnAl layered double oxides nanocomposites

In this work, Au/ZnAl-layer double oxides (LDO) nanocomposties were prepared through a facile calcination process of AuCl4− intercalated ZnAl-layered double hydroxides (LDHs) nanocomposites. The morphology and crystal structure of these nanocomposites were characterized by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), and N2 sorption analysis. By tailoring the process parameter, such as calcination temperature, heating time and the component composition, the adsorption properties of methyl orange (MO) on the Au/ZnAl-LDO nanocomposites were investigated in this work. In a typical adsorption process, it was found that 0.985 mg of MO (0.01 g L−1, 100 mL, 1 mg of MO in total) can be removed in 60 min by utilizing only 2.5 mg of Au/ZnAl-LDO (Au content, 1%) as adsorbents. Our adsorption data obtained from the Langmuir model also gave good values of the determination coefficient, and the saturated adsorption capacity of Au/ZnAl-LDO nanocomposites for MO was found to be 627.51 mg/g under ambient condition (e.g., room temperature, 1 atm). In principle, these hybrid nanostructures with higher adsorption abilities could be very promising adsorbents for wastewater treatment.