Abstract
Different chitosan-titanium oxide (CS-TiO
2
-x, with x = TiO
2
loadings of 1, 5, 10,15 and 20 wt%) nanocomposite fibers were prepared and kept separately in each salt solution of CuSO
4
, CoNO
3
, AgNO
3
and NiSO
4
to adsorb Cu
2+
, Co
2+
, Ag
+
, and Ni
+
ions, respectively. The metal ions loaded onto CS-TiO
2
fibers were reduced to their respective zero-valent metal nanoparticles (ZV-MNPs) like Cu
0
, Co
0
, Ag
0
and Ni
0
by treating with NaBH
4
. The CS-TiO
2
fibers templated with various ZV-MNPs were characterized and investigated for their catalytic efficiency. Among all prepared ZV-MNPs, Cu
0
nanoparticles templated on CS-TiO
2
-15 fibers exhibited high catalytic efficiency for the reduction of dyes (methyl orange (MO), congo red (CR), methylene blue (MB) and acridine orange (AO)) and nitrophenols (4-nitrohphenol (4-NP), 2-nitrophenol (2-NP), 3-nitrophenol (3-NP) and 2,6-dinitrophenol (2,6-DNP)). Besides the good catalytic activities of Cu/CS-TiO
2
-15 fibers, it could be easily recovered by simply pulling the fiber from the reaction medium.