Synthesis And Photocatalytic Properties Of Copper-containing Micro/nanomaterials

Nanomaterials have attracted considerable attention because of their unique physical and chemical properties that allow them to be widely used in areas such as catalysts, confined-space chemical reactors, lithium-ion battery materials, controlled gene delivery, and biomedical diagnosis and therapy or other fields. Cuprous oxide?Cu₂O? is a well-known p-type semiconductor and has a direct small bandgap of 2.2 eV and it has a high absorption coefficient under visible light, which endows it promising applications in solar energy conversion. Therefore, the copper sulfide nanomaterials can absorb visible light effectively, which has excellent photocatalytic activity. This paper adopt the synthesized of Cu₂ O and CuS by hydrothermal method and solvent thermal, and the reaction mechanism are discussed.Using low-temperature hydrothermal methods, the sample of cube, octahedral and twenty hexahedron was successfully prepared in the presence of different dosage of PVP. The as-synthesized copper oxide products were well characterized by several techniques such as X-ray diffraction?XRD?, Scanning Electron Microscope?SEM?. The photocatalysis of cationic dye Methylene blue?MB? and Methyl Orange?MO? was carried out for the assessment of the photocatalytic activity of the products. Through comparison we found that the catalytic activity of the three surfaces of {100}, {111}, {110} is different.Using solvothermal method, different morphology of the copper sulfide micro/nano structure was synthesized by parallel experiment which changing the reaction conditions. Cationic dye MB and MO was used as target degradation. Results indicated that the degradation rate for MB and MO solution with an initial concentration of 10mg·L-1 reached 98.5% and 96.8% in the presence of CuS after visable light irradiation for 18 min separately. We think that the best process have been found, and the reaction mechanism and photocatalytic mechanism was analyzed and discussed.Zinc doped sulfide copper nanocrystalline was successfully achieved when Zinc sulfate as dopant. Photocatalytic experiment results indicated that the degradation rate for MB and MO solution with an initial concentration of 10mg·L-1 reached 99.2% and 97.6% in the presence of CuS after visable light irradiation for 20 min separately. Degradation rate is higher than single CuS and ZnS nanomaterials.