Abstract
The ternary plasmonic AgCl/Ag/g-C3N4 photocatalysts were successfully fabricated by a modified deposition–precipitation method, through which Ag/AgCl nanoparticles (5–15 nm in size) were evenly dispersed on the surface of g-C3N4. The AgCl/Ag/g-C3N4 composites exhibited higher photocatalytic activity than Ag/AgCl and g-C3N4. The enhanced photocatalytic performance could be attributed to an efficient separation of electron–hole pairs through a Z-scheme mechanism, in which Ag nanoparticles acted as charge separation centers.
Highlights
As a new metal-free semiconductor, polymeric graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has been developed to cope with environmental pollutants due to its outstanding mechanical, optical, electronic, and catalytic properties as well as its high thermal and chemical stability [1,2,3,4]
The possible reason is that noble metal nanoparticles can strongly absorb visible light because of their localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), which can be tuned by varying their size, shape, and surroundings [31]
In the X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, no other crystal phases are observed, which indicated that the AgCl/Ag/g-C3N4 composites were successfully fabricated
Summary
As a new metal-free semiconductor, polymeric graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has been developed to cope with environmental pollutants due to its outstanding mechanical, optical, electronic, and catalytic properties as well as its high thermal and chemical stability [1,2,3,4]. Its practical application is quite limited owing to its appreciable drawbacks, including low specific surface area, high photogenerated electron–hole recombination rate, and the limited range of visible light photo-responses [5, 6]. To tackle these issues, many methods have been proposed, such as doping extraneous elements [7,8,9,10], designing porous structures [11,12,13,14,15], depositing noble metals [16–. A plasmonic Z-scheme photocatalytic mechanism was proposed to explain the enhancement of the photocatalytic activity of the AgCl/Ag/g-C3N4 photocatalysts
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