Abstract
Polyamide network polymers (PNP) modified TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) were decorated with Ag NPs in hydrothermal gel method, forming one-step synthesized photocatalysts, Ag@TiO2 NPs. The effect of PNP and the amount of Ag NPs added were investigated in this work. PNP acted as a nanocage to prevent TiO2 aggregation and capture Ag accurately, which could effectively control product sizes and improve dispersibility in solvents. Simultaneously, TiO2 NPs modified with Ag NPs exhibited remarkable photocatalytic effects. One-step synthesis simplified the experimental process and avoided the agglomeration of silver ions during the secondary reaction, achieving the purpose of uniform distribution at a specific location of TiO2 NPs. The prepared Ag@TiO2 NPs-0.5 could remove 79.49% of Methyl Orange (MO) after 3 h of ultraviolet light irradiation, which was 2.7 times higher than the reaction rate of pure TiO2 NPs. It also exhibited good photoactivity under Visible light conditions. Moreover, the mineralization rate of MO over the Ag@TiO2 NPs-0.5 could be up to 72.32% under UV light and 47.08% under Visible light irradiation, which revealed that the prepared catalysts could effectively degrade most of the MO to CO2 and H2O. The samples also demonstrated the excellent stability and easy recyclability with over 90% of the original catalytic level for MO degradation. The photocatalysts studied also exerted broad application prospects such as photovoltaic hydrogen production, electronic sensors and biomedicine.
Highlights
With the rapid advancement of industrialization, human survival faces serious challenges of environmental pollution and energy shortage, which has caused harm to human health [1,2]
Polymer Polyamide network polymers (PNP) was used as a template to find the appropriate amount added without metal loading
By adjusting the amount of PNP added to 0.25, 0.5 and 1 mol (Figure 1b–d), respectively, more and more PNP is added for the preparation of the TiO2 NPs, the growing nanoparticles are confined by the polymeric nanocages in order to prevent from aggregating [26,27]
Summary
With the rapid advancement of industrialization, human survival faces serious challenges of environmental pollution and energy shortage, which has caused harm to human health [1,2]. Nanosized TiO2, first reported by Fujishima, has caused much attention thanks to its low price, non-toxicity, excellent chemical stability, and wide availability [6,7,8]. Photogenerated electrons and holes are re-combined, resulting in low photocatalytic activity [9,10,11]. Narrowing the band gap of TiO2 to broaden the absorption spectrum response interval and reducing the recombination rate of photoinduced electron-hole pairs, have become research hotspots to improve photocatalytic performance [12,13]
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