Abstract
Cu 2 O-P25 (TiO 2 ) nano-heterostructures with different mass ratios were synthesized via a wet chemical precipitation and hydrothermal method, and were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). DRS results showed that the light absorption of P25 extended to the visible light region with the loading of Cu 2 O. XPS results showed that Cu existed in the state of Cu + in the presence of hydroxylamine hydrochloride, confirming the formation of Cu 2 O. The obtained products exhibited efficient photocatalytic performance in degradation of methyl orange (MO) and methylene blue (MB) under simulated solar light. The sample of 5% Cu 2 O-P25 exhibited the highest photocatalytic activity among all as-prepared samples. And the photocatalysts can be recycled without obvious loss of photocatalytic activity.
Highlights
With the development of modern industrialization and urbanlization, serious environment pollution is becoming an intractable problem facing the world
It is noticed that the particles are nearly homogeneously distributed, and no obvious Cu2O particles are observed on P25 particles due to the low concentration and high dispersion, which indicated that P25 can be decorated by smaller Cu2O particles to form nano-nano heterojunctions
Cu2O-P25 nano-composites with different mass ratios were synthesized via a wet chemical precipitation and hydrothermal method
Summary
With the development of modern industrialization and urbanlization, serious environment pollution is becoming an intractable problem facing the world. Among all the treatment methods, photocatalysis is a promising technique for degradation of inorganic and organic pollutants in air and water [1]. It is crucial to develop efficient and stable visible-light sensitive photocatalysts in photocatalytic degradation of industrial pollutant. TiO2 is the traditional and most commonly used photocatalyst since 1972. A large band gap of TiO2 (3.2 eV for anatase) restricts its use only to the narrow light-response range of ultraviolet. The low quantum efficiency is another problem for TiO2, which is due to the recombination of electrons and holes in the photocatalytic process
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