Basic concepts and recent advances in nitrophenol reduction by gold- and other transition metal nanoparticles

•Gold nanoparticles exhibit an excellent catalytic activity toward 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol reduction.•The mechanism of gold catalyzed 4-nitrophenol reduction could be illustrated by Langmuir–Hinshelwood (LH) model.•Other transition metal nanoparticles e.g. palladium, silver, copper, etc. also show the catalytic activity for 4-nitrophenol reduction, in particular the Palladium nanoparticles.

This review presents the basic concepts and recent developments and advances of gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-catalyzed 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) reduction to 4-aminophenol (4-AP) by sodium borohydride, including the catalytic mechanism, the variety of stabilizers, and dendritic, natural and heterogeneous AuNP supports. The nano-gold catalysts are classified according to different stabilizers, the review contains 205 citations.