The production of an efficient visible light photocatalyst for CO oxidation through the surface plasmonic effect of Ag nanoparticles on SiO2@α-Fe2O3 nanocomposites

Kasimayan Uma; Shih-Wen Chen; Nadarajan Arjun; Guan-Ting Pan; Thomas C-K Yang

doi:10.1039/c7ra13260c

The production of an efficient visible light photocatalyst for CO oxidation through the surface plasmonic effect of Ag nanoparticles on SiO₂@α-Fe₂O₃ nanocomposites

RSC Adv. 2018 Apr 5;8(23):12547-12555. doi: 10.1039/c7ra13260c. eCollection 2018 Apr 3.

Authors

Kasimayan Uma¹, Shih-Wen Chen², Nadarajan Arjun², Guan-Ting Pan², Thomas C-K Yang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Precision Analysis and Research Center, National Taipei University of Technology Taipei Taiwan 106.
² Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, National Taipei University of Technology Taipei Taiwan 106 ckyang@mail.ntut.edu.

Abstract

A process for the photo deposition of noble Ag nanoparticles on a core-shell structure of SiO₂@α-Fe₂O₃ nanocomposite spheres was performed to produce a CO photo oxidation catalyst. The structural analyses were carried out for samples produced using different Ag metal nanoparticle weight percentages on SiO₂@α-Fe₂O₃ nanocomposite spheres by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), UV-vis spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). A computational study was also performed to confirm the existence of the synergic effect of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) for different weight percentages of Ag on the SiO₂@α-Fe₂O₃ nanocomposites. The mechanism for CO oxidation on the catalyst was explored using diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRFIT). The CO oxidation results for the Ag (2 wt%)-SiO₂@α-Fe₂O₃ nanocomposite spheres showed 48% higher photocatalytic activity than α-Fe₂O₃ and SiO₂@α-Fe₂O₃ at stable temperature.