Designed synthesis of microstructure and defect-controlled Cu-doped ZnO-Ag nanoparticles: exploring high-efficiency sunlight-driven photocatalysts

Cu-doped ZnO nanoparticles composited with Ag were synthesized by a one-step sol-gel method in this work, aiming at highly photocatalytic activity and possible application under sunlight (especially near ultraviolet and visible light regions, 300-760 nm) irradiation. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) shows that the introduction of Cu inhibits particle aggregation. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) reveal that Zn(Cu)O-Ag nanoparticles (CZA NPs) are composed of metallic Ag (Ag0) and Zn(Cu)O nanocrystals; while at the Cu concentration of higher than 2%, a few CuO nanocrystals appear. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) results evidenced the well-defined formation of Zn(Cu)O-Ag and/or CuO-ZnO-Ag heterojunctions. UV-vis spectra display that the visible absorption of the samples is obviously enhanced after the Cu introduction. At a low Cu doping level (0.2%) and moderate Cu concentration (3%-5%), the blue and green photoluminescence (PL) emission strength of the samples becomes very weak in comparison to other samples, indicative of the high separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Reasonably, the higher photocatalytic degradation (complete degradation of methylene blue (MB) and methyl orange (MO) within 40 min under the simulated sunlight irradiation) are achieved in these cases: low Cu doping level (0.2%) and moderate Cu concentration (3%-5%) in CZA NPs. Further, we checked the effects of other factors on the photocatalytic degradation for possible application. Our results suggest that one well-designed composite type such as element-doped Zn(M)O-Ag nano-heterojunction or complicated metal oxide-ZnO-Ag nanocomposites possessing suitable band structures for the separation and utilization of photo-generated carriers, will remarkably improve the photocatalytic performance of nano-ZnO under sunlight irradiation.