Acta Phys. -Chim. Sin. ›› 2014, Vol. 30 ›› Issue (10): 1909-1915.doi: 10.3866/PKU.WHXB201408046

• CATALYSIS AND SURFACE SCIENCE • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Preparation and Characterization of Co3(PO4)2/Ag3PO4 Nanocomposites for Visible-Light Photocatalysis

GU Yong-Qin, WANG Bo, GU Xiu-Quan, ZHAO Yu-Long, QIANG Ying-Huai, ZHANG Shuang, ZHU Lei   

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, Jiangsu Province, P. R. China
  • Received:2014-06-05 Revised:2014-08-03 Published:2014-09-30
  • Contact: QIANG Ying-Huai E-mail:yhqiang@cumt.edu.cn
  • Supported by:

    The project was supported by the Natural Science Youth Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China (BK20130198) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (2013XK07).

Abstract:

In this study, Ag3PO4 nanoparticles (NPs), cobalt phosphate (Co3(PO4)2, CoP) nanosheets (NSs), and their composites (CoP/Ag3PO4) were synthesized via a facile chemical precipitation method. Their visiblelight photocatalytic activities were compared and investigated. The structural, morphological, optical, and visiblelight photocatalytic properties of the prepared samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), fieldemission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), ultraviolet- visible (UV- Vis) diffuse absorbance and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopies. We found that both the degradation rate and cyclical stability of the CoP/Ag3PO4 hybrids increased significantly under visible-light irradiation when methyl orange (MO) was used as the target with reference to single-phase Ag3PO4 NPs or CoP NSs. This suggests that CoP might play a cocatalyst role, which suppresses carrier recombination and provides a large number of photogenerated holes. Additionally, we also observed that the CoP/Ag3PO4 hybrids hardly degraded Rhodamine B (RhB), a cationic dye. This behavior might be attributed to the lower amount of dye molecule absorption because of a change in surface polarity. We thus present a new approach for the development of low-cost and visible-light responsive photocatalysts.

Key words: Ag3PO4, Co3(PO4)2, Visible-light photocatalysis, Methyl orange, Rhodamine B