Photocatalytic activity tuning in a novel Ag2S/CQDs/CuBi2O4 composite: Synthesis and photocatalytic mechanism

By Huajing Gao, Fei Wang, Shifa Wang, Xiangxian Wang, Zao Yi, Hua Yang. Materials research bulletin, 2019

141 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract CuBi2O4 dumbbell-like architecture built from nanorods was synthesized by a simple coprecipitation route. The growth process of the dumbbell-like architecture was investigated by varying the reaction duration time. Carbon quantum dots (CQDs) and Ag2S nanoparticles were assembled on the surface of the CuBi2O4 dumbbell-like architecture to produce CQDs/CuBi2O4 and Ag2S/CQDs/CuBi2O4 composites. Compared to bare CuBi2O4, the composites, particularly Ag2S/CQDs/CuBi2O4, manifest an increased visible light absorption, increased photocurrent density and decreased charge-transfer resistance. Using simulated sunlight as the light source and rhodamine B (RhB) dye as the target organic pollutant, the photocatalytic activity of the samples was investigated. It is demonstrated that the Ag2S/CQDs/CuBi2O4 composite exhibits the highest photocatalytic activity toward the RhB degradation. This is due to the highly efficient separation of electron/hole pairs and increased visible light absorption of the Ag2S/CQDs/CuBi2O4 composite.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8d8a17b43dc8788649b076e253b62c73a570d2b3