Abstract
Visible-light-driven plasmonic photocatalysts are promising candidates for environmental cleanup applications owing to their high solar energy utilization efficiency. In this Letter, we describe a facile and versatile cyclodextrin (CD)-driven colloidal self-assembly approach toward visible-light-responsive Au/TiO2 photocatalysts for the degradation of the herbicide phenoxyacetic acid (PAA) in water. The effect of several cyclodextrins, natives and modified, is investigated. Our results reveal that these cyclic oligosaccharides exert antagonistic actions on the size of metal particles and the porosity of composite materials. Indeed, because of their surface-active properties and weak intermolecular interactions, the randomly methylated β-CD and the 2-hydropropoxyl β-CD produce large Au particles dispersed over a highly porous TiO2 material, whereas the native α-CD, β-CD and γ-CD, owing to their ability to self-assemble into cage-type structures through intermolecular hydrogen-bond interactions, allow us to...
Published Version
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