Facile synthesis of water-soluble silver nanoclusters for the photocatalytic degradation of dyes by multivariate optimization approach

Saif Ullah; Qinzhen Li; Rooh Ullah; Sadat Anwar; Muhammad Fazal Hameed; Manzhou Zhu

doi:10.1039/d3na00227f

Facile synthesis of water-soluble silver nanoclusters for the photocatalytic degradation of dyes by multivariate optimization approach

Nanoscale Adv. 2023 May 15;5(12):3326-3335. doi: 10.1039/d3na00227f. eCollection 2023 Jun 13.

Authors

Saif Ullah¹, Qinzhen Li¹, Rooh Ullah², Sadat Anwar^{1

3

4}, Muhammad Fazal Hameed⁵, Manzhou Zhu¹

Affiliations

¹ Institutes of Physical Science and Information Technology, Centre for Atomic Engineering of Advanced Materials, Key Laboratory of Structure and Functional Regulation of Hybrid Materials of Ministry of Education, Department of Chemistry, Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Chemistry for Inorganic/Organic Hybrid Functionalized Materials, Anhui University Hefei Anhui 230601 China zmz@ahu.edu.cn.
² Department of Chemistry, University of Turbat Turbat Balochistan Pakistan.
³ Institute of Chemical Sciences, University of Peshawar Pakistan.
⁴ Sino-Bright School No. 8, 129 South 4th Ring, FengTai District Beijing 100005 China.
⁵ Institutes of Physical Science and Information Technology, Anhui University Hefei Anhui 230601 China.

Abstract

In this study, silver nanoclusters protected by the natural tripeptide ligand (GSH@Ag NCs) were constructed for photocatalytic dye degradation. The ultrasmall GSH@Ag NCs were found to exhibit a remarkably high degradation capability. Aqueous solutions of the hazardous organic dye Erythrosine B (Ery. B) and Rhodamine B (Rh. B) were subjected to degradation in the presence of Ag NCs under solar light and white-light LED irradiation. The degradation efficiency of GSH@Ag NCs was evaluated using UV-vis spectroscopy, where Erythrosine B showed considerably high degradation of 94.6% compared to Rhodamine B, which was degraded by 85.1%, corresponding to a 20 mg L^-1 degradation capacity in 30 min respectively under solar exposure. Moreover, the degradation efficacy for the above-mentioned dyes demonstrated a dwindling trend under white-light LED irradiation, attaining 78.57 and 67.923% degradation under the same experimental conditions. The astoundingly high degradation efficiency of GSH@Ag NCs under solar-light irradiation was due to the high I of 1370 W for solar light versus 0.07 W for LED light, along with the formation of hydroxyl radicals HO˙ on the catalyst surface initiating degradation due to oxidation.