Deposition-precipitation preparation of Ag/Ag3PO4/WO3 nanocomposites for efficient Visible-light degradation of rhodamine B under strongly acidic/alkaline conditions

Qingyong Li; Fulei Wang; Yuxiang Hua; Yuting Luo; Xiaoheng Liu; Guorong Duan; Xujie Yang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.018

Deposition-precipitation preparation of Ag/Ag₃PO₄/WO₃ nanocomposites for efficient Visible-light degradation of rhodamine B under strongly acidic/alkaline conditions

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2017 Nov 15:506:207-216. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.018. Epub 2017 Jul 6.

Authors

Qingyong Li¹, Fulei Wang¹, Yuxiang Hua¹, Yuting Luo¹, Xiaoheng Liu², Guorong Duan¹, Xujie Yang¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Education Ministry for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China.
² Key Laboratory of Education Ministry for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. Electronic address: xhliu@njust.edu.cn.

PMID: 28735194
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.018

Abstract

A series of novel visible-light-driven Ag/Ag₃PO₄/WO₃ (AAPW) Z-scheme heterostructures were fabricated using a facile deposition-precipitation method followed by photo-reduction without adding any surfactant. To explore more deeply about the photocatalytic activity of AAPW nanocomposites under neutral and strongly acidic/alkaline conditions, we investigated their photocatalytic rhodamine B (RhB) efficiency at different pH value that was controlled by adding HNO₃ or NaOH aqueous solution. It was found that as-prepared AAPW photocatalysts showed enhanced photocatalytic RhB efficiency under neutral and even strongly acidic/alkaline environment. The process of charge carrier separation and transfer in the AAPW nanocomposites and Z-scheme mechanism for RhB degradation were described in sufficient detail based on systematical characterizations and measurements. The silver particles introduced to build AAPW Z-scheme structure should contribute to more efficient charge separation, resulting in enhanced photocurrent response and photocatalytic activity. We expect thatthis work will provide systematic study concerning Z-scheme Ag/Ag₃PO₄/WO₃ structure, and fulfill the research about photodegrade activity of catalyst under strongly acidic/alkaline conditions.

Keywords: Ag/Ag(3)PO(4)/WO(3) nanocomposites; Strongly acidic/alkaline conditions; Visible light photocatalysis; Z-scheme.