Near-Infrared (NIR) Silver Sulfide (Ag 2 S) Semiconductor Photocatalyst Film for Degradation of Methylene Blue Solution
A silver sulfide (Ag S) semiconductor photocatalyst film has been successfully synthesized using a solution casting method. To produce the photocatalyst films, two types of Ag S powder were used: a commercialized and synthesized powder. For the commercialized powder (CF/comAg S), the Ag S underwent...
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Published in | Materials Vol. 16; no. 1; p. 437 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Switzerland
MDPI AG
03.01.2023
MDPI |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | A silver sulfide (Ag
S) semiconductor photocatalyst film has been successfully synthesized using a solution casting method. To produce the photocatalyst films, two types of Ag
S powder were used: a commercialized and synthesized powder. For the commercialized powder (CF/comAg
S), the Ag
S underwent a rarefaction process to reduce its crystallite size from 52 nm to 10 nm, followed by incorporation into microcrystalline cellulose using a solution casting method under the presence of an alkaline/urea solution. A similar process was applied to the synthesized Ag
S powder (CF/syntAg
S), resulting from the co-precipitation process of silver nitrate (AgNO
) and thiourea. The prepared photocatalyst films and their photocatalytic efficiency were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and UV-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis). The results showed that the incorporation of the Ag
S powder into the cellulose films could reduce the peak intensity of the oxygen-containing functional group, which indicated the formation of a composite film. The study of the crystal structure confirmed that all of the as-prepared samples featured a monoclinic acanthite Ag
S structure with space group P
/C. It was found that the degradation rate of the methylene blue dye reached 100% within 2 h under sunlight exposure when using CF/comAg
S and 98.6% for the CF/syntAg
S photocatalyst film, and only 48.1% for the bare Ag
S powder. For the non-exposure sunlight samples, the degradation rate of only 33-35% indicated the importance of the semiconductor near-infrared (NIR) Ag
S photocatalyst used. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 1996-1944 1996-1944 |
DOI: | 10.3390/ma16010437 |