Effects of oxidants on the in-situ polymerization of aniline to form Cu2O/ZnO/PANI composite photocatalyst

Abstract

Oxidants are known to play a key role in regulating the structure and physical properties of polyaniline (PANI) during synthesis, by just changing or altering the redox potential of the oxidants the morphologies, and dimensions of nanostructures PANIs can be managed effectively. This study aimed to determine the efficacy of both single and some composite oxidants on the synthesis of PANI on a binary composite to form a ternary composite. Cu2O/ZnO/PANI (CZP) composite photocatalyst was produced from Cu2O/ZnO through in-situ polymerization of aniline with ammonium persulfate (APS), ammonium persulfate/potassium dichromate (APS/K2Cr2O7), and ammonium persulfate/potassium permanganate (APS/KMnO4) oxidants using 0.1 mL aniline monomer to see the effects of different oxidants on the composite. APS/KMnO4 was found to be the best oxidant after testing the photocatalytic activities and physicochemical properties of all the synthesized composites. CZP-APS/KMnO4 was found to have the best photocatalytic degradation performance followed by CZP-APS, with CZP-APS/K2Cr2O7 having the least activity. Likewise, analysis of the rate constant reaffirms the best activity of CZP-APS/KMnO4, even though all the reactions followed pseudo-first order but the rate constant of CZP-APS/KMnO4 (0.10 min−1) is much higher than the rate constant of CZP-APS (0.08 min−1) and that of CZP-APS/K2Cr2O7 (0.03 min−1).