Water pollution from nitrophenol, a common nitrogen-containing aromatic pollutant, is becoming increasingly significant. Making the conversion of nitrophenol to the less toxic and more easily biodegradable aminophenol

is a promising strategy to treat industrial wastewater. A simple and

efficient method for treating nitrophenol was investigated using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with thiourea and fabricating AuNPs films via filtration for the first time. The prepared AuNPs film with nanoporous structure exhibits good structural stability and excellent catalytic activity. The results show that the optimal concentration of adding thiourea is 20?μg/mL, and the optimal concentration of adding NaBH4 is 1000?mM. After treatment with 20.0?μg/mL thiourea,

the prepared AuNPs film catalyzes the degradation of 1.0?mM

2-nitrophenol to 2-aminophenol in just 150?sec. The AuNPs film provides a

high density of active sites at the interface, and its stable

nanoporous structure brings the substrate nitrophenol closer to the

active center, thus enhancing the efficiency of catalytic reduction.

Besides, the AuNPs films treated with thiourea still maintained good

catalytic performance after seven cycles of catalysis and the catalytic

efficiency is still as high as 90%. The thiourea-treated AuNPs film sets

a precedent for the innovation of novel catalysts that is a very

promising industrial strategy for reducing nitrophenol to aminophenol, offering significant economic advantages.