Abstract
In this work, the highly efficient and low-cost Ag-AgBr/AlOOH plasmonic photocatalyst is successfully prepared via a simple and mild wet-chemical process and used for degrading high concentration methylene blue (MB) and tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH). The optimized 6-Ag-AgBr/AlOOH sample showed a 79% decomposition of TCH in 2 h, which is almost two times higher than that of bare AgBr (37%). For degrading MB, the photocatalytic activity of 6-Ag-AgBr/AlOOH (decomposing 84% in 2 h) showed a large enhancement as compared to bare AgBr (only 57%). The TEM, HRTEM, XRD, DRS, and XPS characterization results confirm that Ag-AgBr is a composite catalyst formed by loading Ag nanoparticles onto AgBr surfaces and then loaded on to AlOOH. The possible mechanism proposed is that • and •OH radicals produced under sun light are the main active species for degrading MB and TCH. It is hoped that this work will open a new gateway to the synthesis of highly efficient and low-cost Ag-AgBr/AlOOH plasmonic photocatalysts for degrading organic pollutants.
Highlights
In recent years, modern industries including the textile, pharmaceutical, paper, plastics, rubber, cosmetics, food, and leather industries use a huge amount of dyes for various purposes (Hassandoost et al, 2019; Hou et al, 2019; Li et al, 2019b, 2020; Qi et al, 2019a; Zhang et al, 2019)
The authors hope that this work will open a new pathway to prepare high efficiency and low-cost Ag-AgBr/AlOOH plasmonic photocatalysts that can be used for the degradation of organic pollutants
It can be seen that the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns are well-indexed to AlOOH (JCPDS card number 21-1307), which matches well with Yan et al.’s results 2016
Summary
Modern industries including the textile, pharmaceutical, paper, plastics, rubber, cosmetics, food, and leather industries use a huge amount of dyes for various purposes (Hassandoost et al, 2019; Hou et al, 2019; Li et al, 2019b, 2020; Qi et al, 2019a; Zhang et al, 2019). Various photocatalysts, including TiO2, ZnO, CdS, WO3, AgCl, AgBr, etc., have been used, but the poor utilization of solar light has limited the technique’s practical utilization (An et al, 2010; Jiang et al, 2012; Qi et al, 2017; Ahmed et al, 2018; Bazazi et al, 2018; Hu et al, 2019; Huo et al, 2019b; Low et al, 2019; Ma et al, 2019; Stucchi et al, 2019; Wang et al, 2019b; Mei et al, 2020) Among these photocatalysts, AgBr has received more and more attention because of its high oxidation efficiency. The authors hope that this work will open a new pathway to prepare high efficiency and low-cost Ag-AgBr/AlOOH plasmonic photocatalysts that can be used for the degradation of organic pollutants. The as-collected samples were dried in oven at 70◦C overnight and the final sample was collected in the form of a fine powder
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