Synthesis of Ag/CoFe2O4 magnetic aerogel for catalytic reduction of nitroaromatics

An efficient technique for producing the Ag/CoFe2O4 noble trimetallic aerogel is provided. The advantages of this approach are fast preparation, short gelation time, avoiding the use of surfactants, and preparation at room temperature. The Ag/CoFe2O4 aerogel was characterized by common analysis methods including FESEM, VSM, EDX mapping, TEM, BET, and XRD. The resulting aerogel exhibits outstanding catalytic activity, and durability in reducing different nitroarenes. The reactions were carried out using hydrazine hydrate as a reducing agent, a 0.03 g catalyst, and ethanol as the solvent at reflux conditions. Under these conditions, 13 derivatives of nitro-arenes were successfully reduced to aniline derivatives in 4 h in 70-95 % yield. This reaction had some ad-vantages such as no use of toxic organic solvents, mild reaction conditions, easy separation of the products without any tedious separation techniques, and a recyclable catalyst. The catalyst showed high recyclability in which only 8 % decrease was observed after five runs.