Electrochemical Deposition And Characterization Of Cu/CNT Composites Structure

Copper nanoparticles are highly active and selective catalysts with large specific surface area,were used to catalytic degradation the p-nitrophenol.Different microsctructures of Cu particles,such as nanocubes,nanowires,discoid,dendritic,and hollow structure has large effect on the catalytic efficiency.However,the catalyst was easy to agglomerate in the degradation process and lower catalytic efficiency.Moreover,it is difficult to recycle the nanoparticle catalyst after the degradation.In this paper,to address the problem of agglomeration and recycle,we electrodeposit Cu/CNT composite structure on the substrate for degradation of p-nitrophenol by changing the electrodeposition conditions.Firstly,CNT/Cu composite structure were electrodeposited by controlling the component ratio of additives(Carbon nanotube CNT,polyacrylic acid PA and twelve alkyl sodium sulfate SDS)in CuS04 solution and current density.It was found that PA inhibited Cu deposition and can tune the Cu/CNT microstruction,while SDS enhanced Cu deposition.And the Cu/CNT composite structure with different morphologies was obtained by changing the dispersion properties of CNT.The network-like Cu/CNT composite structures on Cu foil were prepared after optimized the electrodeposition condition.In order to further enhance the catalytic performance by integrating with crystalline silicon solar cells,we had tried preparing Cu/CNT composite structure on silicon wafer for the degradation of p-nitrophenol.The flower-like Cu/CNT composite structure were obtained at current densities of 56 mA/cm2 with 2 g/L PA and 1 g/L non-dispersed CNT.And its degradation reaction rate constant k for p-nitrophenol can reach 0.0078 s-1,the degradation rate is 97.4%.Here,the degradation reaction rate constant k is larger than the value of the reported Cu catalysts in the literature.The Cu/CNT composite structure we electrodeposited in this paper can degrade p-nitrophenol effectively and is easy to recycle.This method can solve the recycle problem of Cu nanoparticle catalysts.