title: One-pot synthesis of ternary Ag₂CO₃/Ag/AgCl photocatalyst in natural geothermal water with enhanced photocatalytic activity under visible light irradiation.
abstract: Geothermal water is a clean, cheap and renewable resource and it is widely distributed all over the world. In this work, ternary Ag2CO3/Ag/AgCl photocatalyst has been successfully synthesized via a one-pot precipitation method in natural geothermal water at room temperature, wherein the geothermal water serves as the source of chlorine and carbonate. The results suggest that the Ag/AgCl nanoparticles are anchored on the surface of Ag2CO3 and Ag2CO3/Ag/AgCl composite shows strong absorption ability in the visible light region. The evaluation of the photocatalytic activity indicates that the as-synthesized Ag2CO3/Ag/AgCl photocatalyst exhibits higher photocatalytic performance for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) aqueous solution under visible light irradiation than one-component (Ag2CO3), two-component (Ag/AgCl, Ag2CO3/AgCl) and the mechanical mixture of Ag2CO3 and Ag/AgCl. The trapping experiments confirmed that holes (h(+)) and (•)O2(-) were the two main active species in the photocatalytic process. Finally, a possible Z-scheme photocatalytic mechanism of the charge transfer was proposed for the enhanced photocatalytic performance. This work may open up new insights into the application of cheap geothermal water resources in the word and provide new opportunities for facile fabrication of Ag/AgCl-based photocatalysts.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials of Ministry Education, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China.
authors.forename: Xiaxi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials of Ministry Education, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. Electronic address: xhliu@mail.njust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Xiaoheng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D002254:Carbonates / Q000138:chemical synthesis*; D045482:Hot Springs / Q000737:chemistry*; D008027:Light; D008854:Microscopy, Electron; D056951:Photoelectron Spectroscopy; D010782:Photolysis; D018030:Silver Compounds / Q000138:chemical synthesis*; D012835:Silver Nitrate / Q000737:chemistry*; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction
chemical_list: D002254:Carbonates; D018030:Silver Compounds; D012835:Silver Nitrate; C037548:silver chloride; C033260:silver carbonate
keywords: Ag(2)CO(3); Ag/AgCl; Geothermal water; Photocatalysis; Visible light