Black phosphorus@Au NPs decorated on a porous spherical montmorillonite as a self-sedimentary catalyst for cost-effective and efficient catalysis

Black phosphorus (BP) has exhibited its potential application as the cocatalyst substrate for catalytic reduction of organic pollutants due to its excellent electron transfer ability. However, the application was limited by the reuse process due to its light mass with abundant recovery devices involved. In this work, a micro-sized spherical montmorillonite (SMt) with the self-sedimentary property was used to support BP@Au NPs. The strong adsorption ability of porous SMt could increase the concentration of 4-nitrophenol near the catalytic active sites, thus, accelerating the catalytic process. The optimized apparent reduction rate constant of 6.1 min-1 and the turnover frequency of 648 h-1 were obtained, which was one of the most efficient catalytic system. More importantly, the fabricated SMt supported heterogeneous catalyst could be facile recycled without any devices involved. The morphology and catalytic performance were almost unaltered after recycling 20 times. Our straightforward strategy to solve the issue of the reuse process through a self-sedimentary substrate facilitates the practical application of these catalysts in the reduction of organic pollutants