A sustainable anchoring of palladium nanoparticles on waste plastic derived functionalized robust carbon: There of application in sensing of genotoxic bio-thiol compound and oxygen evolution activity

Abstract

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) based plastic pollution is most grievous threat for environment and lives on earth. However, reusing such plastic waste as carbon (PC) resource for material development become fascinated research in concern of waste management. In this context, we report fabrication of a new N-heterocyclic carbene-palladium nanoparticles supported on PC (PdNPs@PC-NHC) as a promising nanocatalyst and carried out numerous analytical techniques to the aforementioned material. Insight studies on nanocatalyst for enzymatic oxidation of o-phenylenediamine (OPD) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) shows effectual values of maximum velocity (Vmax) and Michaelis-Menten constant (Km) for H₂O₂ i.e., 3.3 × 10^-8 Ms⁻¹ and 4.4 mM, while OPD yielded 0.5 × 10^-9 Ms⁻¹, 0.29 mM respectively, demonstrating the significant potential as a nanozyme with perceptible seven recycles. Herein, the nanozyme proclaims the excellent sensitivity of 0.042 µmol⁻¹ cm⁻¹ in the detection of the sulfhydryl-containing mercaptoacetic acid (MAA) with a detection limit of 3.17 µM. Further magnitude, the same material employed as electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). This exhibited remarkable OER activity with 46 mV/dec of shallow Tafel slope and 310 mV of overpotential to reach up to 40 mA/cm². The LSV polarisation curve following the long-term 24 h chronoamperometric stability test, which confirmed resilient nature of the PdNPs@PC-NHC nanocatalyst.