Abstract
In the paper, a novel polyacrylonitrile/Ag/ZnO (PAN/Ag/ZnO) microporous membrane was prepared by sequential electrospinning, chemical silver plating and hydrothermal reaction. Morphology and structure of PAN/Ag/ZnO membrane and the photocatalytic performance of Rhodamine Bsolution under visible-light irradiation were systematically investigated. It was found that ZnO nanorod and ZnO nanosheet with hexagonal wurtzite structure were prepared in different concentration of growth solution. The visible light photocatalytic performance test showed that ZnO nanorod had higher photocatalytic efficiency than ZnO nanosheet. After 6 hours of irradiation, the degradation efficiency of the RhB solution of PAN/Ag/ZnO film with only 2 mg of ZnO nanorods reached 98%. After 5 times of repeated experiments, there was no notable decrease in the performance. The photocatalytic performance of the material is enhanced by chemical silver plating. Compared with the unsilvered samples, the addition of Ag not only made the microporous film grow more ZnO, but also greatly improved the visible light photocatalytic performance by forming Ag-ZnO metal-semiconductor interface.
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