The effect of silver resources on the photocatalytic reduction and oxidation properties of AgSCN

摘要

Photocatalysis as a green chemical method has attracted much attention for the environmental clean-up such as heavy metal ions removal and organic medicine decontamination. Herein, a nonmetallic acid salt AgSCN photocatalyst, prepared by a facile ultrasound-aided chemical precipitation method at room temperature, is firstly employed to photocatalytic reduce Cr(VI) and photocatalytic oxidise metronidazole. The as-synthesised AgSCN photocatalysts are highly efficient and stable for the photocatalytic reduction of Cr(VI) under the low-energy UV light irradiation without adjusting pH in reaction solution. In addition, different silver resources are actually effective for the photocatalytic activity of AgSCN, mainly owing to the various particle sizes and separation ability of photogenerated hole-electron pairs, etc. Besides, the as-synthesised AgSCN particles with various silver raw sources are also active for photocatalytic oxidation of metronidazole under low UV light irradiation, which is mainly attributed to the h(+) and center dot O-2(-) active species. The as-prepared AgSCN semiconductor in this work would provide a new potential to the practical application of environmental clean-up in the future.