A redox-active support for the synthesis of Au@SnO2 core-shell nanostructure and SnO2 quantum dots with efficient photoactivities

Xiaoyang Pan; Wen-Jie Chen; Huizhen Cai; Hui Li; Xue Jiao Sun; Bo Weng; Zhiguo Yi

doi:10.1039/d0ra06175a

A redox-active support for the synthesis of Au@SnO₂ core-shell nanostructure and SnO₂ quantum dots with efficient photoactivities

RSC Adv. 2020 Sep 14;10(56):33955-33961. doi: 10.1039/d0ra06175a. eCollection 2020 Sep 10.

Authors

Xiaoyang Pan¹, Wen-Jie Chen¹, Huizhen Cai¹, Hui Li¹, Xue Jiao Sun¹, Bo Weng², Zhiguo Yi³

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Materials, Quanzhou Normal University Quanzhou 362000 China xypan@qztc.edu.cn.
² cMACS, Department of Microbial and Molecular Systems, KU Leuven Celestijnenlaan 200F 3001 Leuven Belgium bo.weng@kuleuven.be.
³ State Key Lab of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai 200050 China zhiguo@mail.sic.ac.cn.

Abstract

A defect pyrochlore-type Sn_1.06Nb₂O_5.59F_0.97 (SnNbOF) nano-octahedron is used as a redox-active support for fabricating Au@SnO₂ core-shell and SnO₂ quantum dots at room temperature without the use of organic species or foreign reducing reagents. Gold (Au) and SnO₂ components were obtained through an in situ redox reaction between the HAuCl₄ and reductive Sn²⁺ ions incorporated in SnNbOF. The composition and morphology of the resulting nanocomposites (denoted as Au-SnNbOF) could be controlled by adjusting the Au/SnNbOF ratio. The Au-SnNbOF nanocomposites exhibited efficient photoactivities for methyl orange (MO) degradation under the visible light irradiation (λ > 420 nm), during which the MO was almost completely degraded within 8 min. Among all the samples, the 5wt% Au-SnNbOF nanocomposite had the highest rate constant (0.43 min^-1), which was 40 times higher than that of the blank SnNbOF.