Preparation of high‐activity AgBr/Ag₃PO₄ photocatalyst based on hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide and mechanism of photocatalytic enhancement

Abstract

A high‐activity AgBr/Ag3PO4 heterojunction photocatalyst was synthesized based on hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide. Its microspheres were characterized using X‐ray diffractometry, transmission electron microscopy and ultraviolet–visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The new photocatalyst with high photocatalytic activity exceptionally outperforms pure Ag3PO4 and AgBr in methyl orange degradation. The enhancement of photocatalytic activity is attributed to the efficient separation of electron–hole pairs. In this photocatalytic reaction, h+ and •O2− are the main reactive species that induce visible‐light‐driven degradation.

Surface Functionalization of Cotton Fabric with Ag3PO4 via Citric Acid Cross-linking Using An Industrialized Padding Process and Its Self-Cleaning Performance

“…Besides, ten main peaks including 20.93°, 29.72°, 33.35°, 36.63°, 47.84°, 52.73°, 55.07°, 57.32°, 61.68°, and 71.95°were found from the spectra of pure Ag3PO4 particles, and they were attributed with the crystal planes of ( 110), ( 200), ( 210), ( 211), ( 310), ( 222), ( 320), ( 321), (400), and (421) of body-centered cubic phase Ag3PO4 (JCPDS card No. 06-0505), correspondingly (Song et al 2018;). Compared with CA-Cotton and Ag3PO4, Ag3PO4@CA-Cotton exhibited all the characteristic peaks of the two in its XRD spectra, indicating the existence of Ag3PO4 on CA-Cotton.…”

“…In addition, the valence band of Ag3PO4 is approximately +2.9 V vs. NHE, suggesting that it shows high photocatalytic capacity to decompose organic compounds in aqueous system under visible light irradiation (Yu et al 2017). Unfortunately, several weaknesses have been found in the Ag3PO4 photocatalytic system (Chen et al 2016;Song et al 2018): (1) there is the uncontrollable photocorrosion under light irradiation during its reaction process, especially without electron acceptors, thus leading to a reduced stability and activity of Ag3PO4 in water. (2) small size of Ag3PO4 nanoparticles usually show high photocatalytic activity, which may result in a difficult separation of the nanoparticles from water, thus causing secondary pollution.…”