Tailor-made hollow silver nanoparticle cages assembled with silver nanoparticles: an efficient catalyst for epoxidation.

A novel approach toward the synthesis of hollow silver nanoparticle (NP) cages built with building blocks of silver NPs by layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly is demonstrated. The size of the NP cage depends on the size of template used for the LbL assembly. The microcages showed a uniform distribution of spherical silver nanoparticles with an average diameter of 20 ± 5 nm, which increased to 40 ± 5 nm when the AgNO3 concentration was increased from 25 to 50 mM. Heat treatment of the polyelectrolyte capsules at 80 °C near their pKa values yielded intact nano/micro cages. These cages produced a higher conversion for the epoxidation of olefins and maintained their catalytic activity even after four successive uses. The nanocages exhibited unique and attractive characteristics for metal catalytic systems, thus offering the scope for further development as heterogeneous catalysts.