Visible-light induced degradation of diphenyl urea and polyethylene using polythiophene decorated CuFe2O4 nanohybrids

Abstract

The present work reports facile synthesis of CuFe2O4 nanoparticles via co-precipitation method and formulation of its nanohybrids with polythiophene (PTh). The structural and morphological properties were investigated using fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive spectra (SEM-EDS) and UV–Vis spectroscopy. The band gap was found to decrease with increase in the loading of PTh and was found to be 2.52 eV for 1-PTh/CuFe2O4, 2.15 eV for 3-PTh/CuFe2O4 and 1.89 eV for 5-PTh/CuFe2O4. The nanohybrids were utilized as photocatalysts for visible light induced degradation of diphenyl urea. Diphenyl urea showed 65% degradation using 150 mg catalyst within 120 min. Polyethylene (PE) was also degraded using these nanohybrids under visible light as well as microwave irradiation to compare its catalytic efficiency under both conditions. Almost 50% of PE was degraded under microwave and 22% under visible light irradiation using 5-PTh/CuFe2O4. The degraded diphenyl urea fragments were analyzed using LCMS and a tentative mechanism of degradation was proposed.

Conductive Polymer-Inorganic Polythiophene/Cd0.5Zn0.5S Heterojunction with Apace Charge Separation and Strong Light Absorption for Boosting Photocatalytic Activity

“…As illustrated in Figure a, the absorption edge of Cd 0.5 Zn 0.5 S is roughly 500 nm. For PTh, it had a strong optical absorption ability at wavelengths of 200–800 nm, which was related to the π–π* (HOMO–LUMO) transition of PTh . And for all of the PTh/CZS nanocomposites, the significantly enhanced light absorption in the 500–800 nm range compared with Cd 0.5 Zn 0.5 S suggested that combining PTh and Cd 0.5 Zn 0.5 S boosted the visible-light absorption, which would increase the yield of charge carriers as well as improve photocatalytic activity.…”