Facile Preparation of Silver Halide Nanoparticles as Visible Light Photocatalysts

Linfan Cui,Qingrui Zhang,Tifeng Jiao,Jingxin Zhou,Qiuming Peng

doi:10.5772/60910

Abstract

In this study, highly efficient silver halide (AgX)-based photocatalysts were successfully fabricated using a facile and template-free direct-precipitation method. AgX nanoparticles, which included silver chloride (AgCl), silver bromide (AgBr) and silver iodide (AgI), were synthesized using different potassium halides and silver acetate as reactive sources. The size distribution of the AgX nanoparticles was determined by the reaction time and ratio of the reagents, which were monitored by UV-vis spectra. The as-prepared AgX nanoparticles exhibited different photocatalytic properties. This shows the differences for the photodegradation of methyl orange and Congo red dyes. In addition, the AgCl nanoparticle-based photocatalyst exhibited the best photocatalytic property among all three types of AgX nanoparticles that are discussed in this study. Therefore, it is a good candidate for removing organic pollutants.

Highlights

Photocatalysts have been widely used in water and air purification to remove organic pollutants [1,2,3,4,5,6]
These AgCl nanoparticles aggregated into large clusters, which prevented an accurate estimation of their morphology and size distributions
The results showed that the AgCl nanoparticles could be used as useful photocatalysts for the degradation of different organic dyes

Summary

Introduction

Photocatalysts have been widely used in water and air purification to remove organic pollutants [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The plasmonic photocatalysts that are made of noble metals nanoparticles exhibit high absorption coefficients in a broad UV–visible– near infrared spectral range This is due to their strong surface plasmon resonance (SPR) [20,21,22]. Silver halides (AgX) are highly photosensitive semicon‐ ductors They have been extensively used as photosensi‐ tizers and source materials in photographic films. Despite the fact that their band gaps are higher than the edge of visible light, AgX is supposed to be a visible light photocatalytic material [28]. This is due to their good photosensitivity. These AgX nanoparticles-based photocatalysts were found to promote the degradation of methyl orange (MO) and Congo red (CR)

Materials

Characterization

Photocatalytic Activity

Results and Discussion

Conclusion