Morphology-Dependent Activities of Silver Phosphates: Visible-Light Water Oxidation and Dye Degradation

• Published in: ChemPlusChem (Weinheim, Germany) Vol. 81; no. 10; pp. 1068 - 1074
• Main Authors: Menezes, Prashanth W., Indra, Arindam, Schwarze, Michael, Schuster, Felix, Driess, Matthias
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.10.2016
• Subjects: Aqueous solutions; Chemistry; Crystal structure; dyes/pigments; Light; Morphology; Nanoparticles; Oxidation; Phosphates; photochemistry; Photodegradation; silver; synthetic methods; water splitting; dyes/pigments; silver; water splitting; photochemistry; synthetic methods
• ISSN: 2192-6506; 2192-6506
• DOI: 10.1002/cplu.201500538

Conversion of sunlight to storable solar fuels offers a convenient and a promising route to renewable energy that is more important on account of the limited availability of fossil fuels and its global environmental benefits. One of the best ways to generate solar fuels is by splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen using visible‐light photocatalysts. Presented is a facile, scalable, and convenient strategy for the preparation of silver phosphate (Ag3PO4) particles with diverse morphology for visible‐light water oxidation and dye degradation. Changing the solvents in the reactions resulted in altered morphology such as ellipsoids, irregular shapes, polyhedra, and sphere‐type particles. These were then extensively characterized. Variation in the activity of photochemical water oxidation and dye degradation was observed during photocatalysis depending on the morphology, whereby the ellipsoids of Ag3PO4 displayed enhanced catalytic performance. Morphology is the key: A facile, scalable, and convenient strategy for the preparation of silver phosphates with diverse morphology for visible‐light water oxidation as well as dye degradation has been uncovered (see figure).