Controllable Fabrication And Catalytic Performances Of AgX(X=Cl,I)-based Photocatalysts

In recent years,plasmonic materials based on Ag/AgX?X=Cl,Br,I?have been attracting great interest as visible-light-driven photocatalysts,they could display outstanding and stable photocatalytic performance for the photodegradation of organic pollutants.In our work,we demonstrate that cube-like Ag/AgCl could be fabricated via a photoirradiation method,the sheet-like and truncated-dodecahedron-like AgI nanostructures could be controllably synthesized via a surfactant-assisted fabrication protocol.1.The cube-like Ag/AgCl species could display excellent photocatalytic performance,this stems from they have been presence of abundant catalytically active sites,such as edges,corners,steps,etc.Most of the currently existing protocols for their fabrication generally suffer from being complex,tedious or painstaking.We report a cube-like Ag/AgCl which could be facilely constructed via a photoirradiation method under ambient conditions and could work as plasmonic photocatalysts towards the photodegradation of methyl orange under visible-light irradiation.More interestingly,our Ag/AgCl could exhibit substantially enhanced plasmonic photocatalytic performance by a factor of ca.12 times simply after an oxidation-chloridization treatment.We verify that the much easier access of the AgCl sites of the after treated Ag/AgCl to the substrate molecules,which could facilitate efficient photoinduced charge separation/transfer,plays an important role in the evidently boosted photocatalytic performances.2.In the past few years,there have great advancements in the research of AgCland AgBr-based photocatalysts.Nevertheless,relevant explorations with regard to AgI-based species are relatively rare.We fabricated a sheet-like and a truncated-dodecahedron-like Ag I nanostructures by using the reactions between AgNO₃ and tetramethylammonium iodide?TMAI?,AgNO₃ and tetrabutylammonium iodide?TBAI?,respectively.In our surfactant-assisted fabrication protocol,AgNO₃ serves as a silver source,while TMAI and TBAI surfactants not only play the role of an iodine source but also that of a directing reagent for controllable fabrication.We show that the AgI nanostructures could work as photocatalysts for the photodegradation of methyl orange pollutants under visible-light irradiation,and the truncated-dodecahedron-like AgI nanostructures display substantially enhanced photocatalytic performances compared to the sheet-like counterparts.In addition,it has been shown that our truncated-dodecahedron-like AgI species exhibits outstanding stability,it can be conducted 22 times continuously for the photocatalytic reactions.