Fabrication of diatomaceous earth (DE) templated gold microparticles for catalytic application

In the present work, the fabrication of self-supporting gold microstructures with complex 3-D morphologies by using nature SiO2-based diatomaceous earth (DE) frustules as template was investigated. The catalytic performance of the resulting mesoporous gold replicas was also studied. The results show that a DE-based templating method employed for synthesizing self-supporting mesoporous gold replica particles was very successful. The excellent catalytic properties of the gold replicas product were confirmed by catalytic conversion of p-nitrophenol (p-NP) into p- aminophenol (p-AP) in the presence of NaBH4 as a reductant. The potential for recycling the gold replica catalyst was probed and found to be reasonably high with no marked deactivation effect.