A Novel Alkali-activated Magnesium Slag-based Nanocomposite for Photocatalytic Production of Hydrogen

摘要

Alkali-activated magnesium slag-based nanocomposite (AMSN) by loaded about 5wt% CuO was synthesized and firstly employed as a novel catalyst for production of hydrogen by photocatalytic water-splitting. The XRD and XPS results indicated that there was principally mineralogical phase of calcium silicate hydrate (CSH) in AMSN, and CuO with a mean particle size of 15 nm dispersed on the surface of AMSN. The UV--visible diffuse reflectance spectrum and photoluminescence spectrum revealed, that the CuO/AMSN sample showed a strong absorption edge at 1.4 eV and a weak photoluminescence peak at 394 nm, respectively. The CuO/AMSN catalyst showed the highest H_2 evolution in amount of 102.95μL/g by photocatalytic water-splitting for 6 h due to the synergistic effect between CSH skeleton network and CuO nanoparticles. A mechanism of photocatalytic H_2 production was suggested.