Synthesis of multifunctional CuFe2O4–reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite: an efficient magnetically separable catalyst as well as high performance supercapacitor and first-principles calculations of its electronic structures

摘要: Here, we report an ‘in situ’ co-precipitation reduction based synthetic methodology to prepare CuFe2O4 nanoparticle–reduced graphene oxide (CuFe2O4–RGO) nanocomposites. First principles calculations on Density Functional Theory (DFT) were performed obtain the electronic structures and properties of CuFe2O4, CuFe2O4–graphene composites, understand interfacial interaction between in composite. The synergistic effect, which resulted from combination unique RGO nanoparticles, was exploited design a magnetically separable catalyst high performance supercapacitor. It has been demonstrated that incorporation composite enhanced its catalytic as well supercapacitance compared with pure CuFe2O4. nanocomposite 96 wt% 4 (96CuFe2O4–4RGO) exhibited efficiency towards (i) 4-nitrophenol 4-aminophenol, (ii) epoxidation styrene oxide. For both these reactions, 96CuFe2O4–4RGO significantly higher than easy magnetic separation reaction mixture good reusability recovered also showed here. better specific capacitance 797 F g−1 at current density 2 A g−1, along ∼92% retention for up 2000 cycles. To best our knowledge, this is first investigation CuFe2O4–RGO reaction, DFT have reported.