Origin of Cycle Performance in the Ag2O/TiO2 Heterostructure Photocatalyst

Yuang Chen; Lina Lin; Wangqiong Xu; Chao Liu; Chengzhong Yu; Yan Cheng; Ruijuan Qi; Rong Huang

doi:10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c01675

Origin of Cycle Performance in the Ag₂O/TiO₂ Heterostructure Photocatalyst

Langmuir. 2023 Oct 24;39(42):14904-14911. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c01675. Epub 2023 Oct 16.

Authors

Yuang Chen¹, Lina Lin¹, Wangqiong Xu¹, Chao Liu², Chengzhong Yu², Yan Cheng¹, Ruijuan Qi¹, Rong Huang^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Polar Materials and Devices (MOE) and Department of Electronics, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China.
² School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.
³ Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, Shanxi 030006, China.

PMID: 37843191
DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c01675

Abstract

In recent years, many studies on photocatalysis focused on improving efficiency. However, the cycle performance is also an important index for industrialization. Here, an Ag₂O/TiO₂ heterostructure photocatalyst is prepared for continuous photodegradation of methylene blue (MB) under visible light, and the samples after the first and fifth round reactions are recycled to study the microstructure evolution of the photocatalyst. The results show that the performance is obviously improved in the second round and remains stable in the following reaction round. Due to the charge transfer, Ag₂O/TiO₂ gradually changes to Ag₂O@Ag-TiO_2-x during the photocatalytic reaction. The resulting localized surface plasmon resonance effect and the change of the interface structure greatly increase the number of carriers and prolong the lifetime of carriers. Such variations of microstructures and photoelectric properties of the samples due to the charge transfer and redox reaction on the surface of the photocatalyst dominate the cycle performance.