Articles
  • Synthesis and optimization of Ag-ZnO heterojunction composite nanofibers for enhanced photocatalytic activity

  • Myeongjun Jia,b and Young-In Leea,b,*

  • aDepartment of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul 01811, Republic of Korea
    bThe Institute of Powder Technology, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul 01811, Republic of Korea

  • This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

In this study, Ag-ZnO heterojunction composite nanofibers with an average diameter of about 100 nm and coupled Ag nanoparticles with a size of 10 nm were synthesized by facile electrospinning followed by thermal treatment whereby the Ag content was tuned by controlling the precursor concentration. Rhodamine B (RhB) was employed as a representative dye pollutant to evaluate the ultraviolet (UV) and visible light photocatalytic activity of the pure ZnO and Ag-ZnO composite nanofibers. The photocatalytic activity of 1.5 at% Ag-ZnO nanofibers toward RhB degradation was the greatest, outperforming pure ZnO nanofiber by a factor of more than 5 times. Further increasing the Ag content led to lower photocatalytic activity, most likely due to the growth of the Ag nanoparticles. It was found that the enhanced photocatalytic activity is caused by the heterojunction structure promoting the charge separation of the photogenerated charge carriers, while the effect of surface plasmon resonance by the Ag nanoparticles on the photoreactivity is insufficient. The Ag-ZnO nanofibers show great promise as innovative and highly performing photocatalyst for photocatalytic waste-water treatment


Keywords: Electrospinning, Nanofiber, Heterojunction, Photocatalyst, Ag-ZnO

This Article

  • 2021; 22(4): 386-393

    Published on Aug 31, 2021

  • 10.36410/jcpr.2021.22.4.386
  • Received on Sep 15, 2020
  • Revised on Apr 26, 2021
  • Accepted on May 14, 2021

Correspondence to

  • Young-In Lee

  • aDepartment of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul 01811, Republic of Korea
    bThe Institute of Powder Technology, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul 01811, Republic of Korea
    Tel : +82-2-970-6646 Fax: +82-2-973-6657

  • E-mail: youngin@seoultech.ac.kr