Silver doped reduced graphene oxide as a promising plasmonic photocatalyst for oxidative coupling of benzylamines under visible light irradiation

Abstract

Visible light assisted photocatalytic transformations have been considered as an efficient and sustainable approach for the production of high-value chemicals. The present paper describes the synthesis of plasmonic silver nanoparticle incorporated reduced graphene oxide and its photocatalytic performance for the selective oxidation of various benzylamines to the corresponding imines using molecular oxygen as an oxidant under ambient temperature conditions. The developed photocatalyst was found to be highly stable and exhibited excellent photoactivity with a consistent recycling ability for several runs without a loss in activity. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, the developed photocatalyst represents the first example of a graphene-based photocatalyst for the oxidative coupling of amines.