Facile fabrication of Ag3PO4 supported on ZnO inverse opals for enhancement of solar-driven photocatalysis

摘要

In this work, Ag3PO4 nanoparticles were applied to couple with ZnO inverse opals (ZnO-IO) and form novel Ag3PO4/ZnO-IO composite photocatalyst with enhanced catalytic activity toward the decolorization of rhodamine B (RhB) under simulated sunlight irradiation. The photocatalytic conversion of RhB over Ag3PO4/ZnO-IO composite catalyst was ca. 1.4-fold higher than that of pristine ZnO-IO and maintained relatively high levels after five successive recycling runs. The notably boosted photocatalytic performance may be primarily ascribed to the efficient separation and transfer of photogenerated electron-hole pairs as well as improved visible light harvesting ability. In addition, the quenching experiments revealed that O-2(-) played the dominant role in the RhB decolorization. A potential transfer pathway of photoinduced charge carriers and solar-driven photocatalytic degradation mechanism were also proposed. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.