Synthesis of Au–Ag alloy nanoparticles supported on silica gel via galvanic replacement reaction

Synthesis of supported Au–Ag bimetallic has attracted much attention since we found for the first time that Au and Ag had synergistic effect on CO oxidation and preferential CO oxidation in rich hydrogen. In this work, the formation of Au–Ag alloy nanoparticles supported on silica gel by galvanic replacement reaction has been investigated. We applied various characterizations including X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electronic microscopy (TEM), ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV–vis), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to characterize the formation process of Au–Ag alloy. Although the average particle sizes of the Au–Ag alloy nanoparticles obtained by the galvanic replacement reaction are relatively large comparing with that of loading Au first, the catalytic activity of the catalyst in preferential CO oxidation is almost the same. This result manifested that the particle size effect of Au–Ag nanoparticles was not as tremendous as that of monometallic gold. The formation of Au–Ag alloy made it less sensitive to the particle size.