Self-sustainable and recyclable Ag nanorods for developing Ag-Ag_2S nano heterostructures using sewage gas: Applications in photocatalytic water purification, hydrogen evolution, SERS and antibacterial activity

摘要

Multifunctionality and recyclability of Ag nanorods array (well known tas potential SERS substrates) have been explored for other imperative applications like water purification by photocatalytic dye degradation, hydrogen evolution, antibacterial activity, and SERS based detection after sulfurization. An easy and green approach of exposing the Ag nanorods array to sewage H2S gas has been applied for sulfurization. This resulted in multifunctional Ag-Ag2S nanoheterostructures manifesting a metal-semiconductor heterojunction with exceptional optical, electronic and photocatalytic properties. The Ag nanorods array on glass as well as ITO substrates were fabricated by glancing angle deposition technique and then sulfurized by exposing to a sewage site, resulting in Ag-Ag2S nanoheterostructures at ambient conditions and confirmed by several morphological, structural and elemental characterization tools. The fabricated nanoheterostructures are utilized efficiently for important applications including dye degradation under visible light irradiation within 30 min, photoelectrochemical reaction for hydrogen evolution, surface enhanced Raman scattering based detection and significant bactericidal effect. The salient features of synthesized Ag-Ag2S nano-heterostructures comprise an important self-sustainable approach which is pivotal in the present research scenario that requires significant multidimensional applications.