Facile functionalization of cotton with nanostructured silver/titania for visible-light plasmonic photocatalysis

Marwa Abid; Soraa Bouattour; Ana M Ferraria; David S Conceição; Ana P Carapeto; Luís F Vieira Ferreira; Ana M Botelho do Rego; Mohamed M Chehimi; Manuel Rei Vilar; Sami Boufi

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.109

Facile functionalization of cotton with nanostructured silver/titania for visible-light plasmonic photocatalysis

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2017 Dec 1:507:83-94. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.109. Epub 2017 Jul 29.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ University of Sfax, Faculty of Science, LCI, BP1171-3018 Sfax, Tunisia. Electronic address: marwa_abid89@yahoo.fr.
² University of Sfax, Faculty of Science, LCI, BP1171-3018 Sfax, Tunisia. Electronic address: soraa.boufi@yahoo.com.
³ Centro de Química-Física Molecular and IN, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal. Electronic address: ana.ferraria@tecnico.ulisboa.pt.
⁴ Centro de Química-Física Molecular and IN, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal. Electronic address: david.conceicao@tecnico.ulisboa.pt.
⁵ Centro de Química-Física Molecular and IN, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal. Electronic address: ana.carapeto@tecnico.ulisboa.pt.
⁶ Centro de Química-Física Molecular and IN, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal. Electronic address: luisfilipevf@tecnico.ulisboa.pt.
⁷ Centro de Química-Física Molecular and IN, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal. Electronic address: amrego@tecnico.ulisboa.pt.
⁸ ITODYS, UMR7086 CNRS, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France; Université Paris Est, ICMPE, UMR7182 CNRS, UPEC, F-94320 Thiais, France. Electronic address: mmchehimi@yahoo.fr.
⁹ ITODYS, UMR7086 CNRS, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France. Electronic address: manuel.rei-vilar@univ-paris-diderot.fr.
¹⁰ University of Sfax, Faculty of Science, LMSE, BP 1171-3000 Sfax, Tunisia. Electronic address: sami.boufi@fss.rnu.tn.

PMID: 28780338
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.109

Abstract

In the present work, a simple, reliable and cost-effective approach to functionalize cotton fabrics with Ag-TiO₂ nanoparticles strongly bound to the fibres and with visible-light-responsive photo-activity is presented. The hybrid cotton-Ag-TiO₂ fabrics were characterized by Raman, AFM, FE-SEM, TGA, XPS GSDR, and LIL to confirm the generation of metallic Ag nanoparticles and crystalline TiO₂ and investigate how the concentration of Ag and TiO₂ precursors affected the morphology and the luminescence properties of the nanostructured layer grafted on the cotton fibres. The photocatalytic activity of the cotton-Ag-TiO₂ hybrid systems was evaluated by the discoloration of Remazol Brilliant Blue R in water under a xenon lamp irradiation (sunlight simulator) equipped with selective filters. The extended photocatalytic activity to the visible is here explained by a synergistic effect of both the excitation of the Ag NPs plasmon resonance by visible light and a delayed electron-hole recombination rate caused by Ag NPs, as it can be observed by UV absorption.

Keywords: Cotton; Plasmonic photocatalyst; Silver-TiO(2); Surface functionalization; Visible light.