Novel Cu2O quantum dots coupled flower-like BiOBr for enhanced photocatalytic degradation of organic contaminant

•Cu2O quantum dots modified BiOBr was successfully synthesized by a simple reductive solution chemistry route.•Cu2O quantum dots greatly increased visible light absorption for BiOBr.•The photocatalyst exhibited flower-like morphology and high activities for organics contaminant degradation.•The mech...

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Veröffentlicht in:Journal of hazardous materials 2014-09, Vol.280, p.417-427
Hauptverfasser: Cui, Wenquan, An, Weijia, Liu, Li, Hu, Jinshan, Liang, Yinghua
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:•Cu2O quantum dots modified BiOBr was successfully synthesized by a simple reductive solution chemistry route.•Cu2O quantum dots greatly increased visible light absorption for BiOBr.•The photocatalyst exhibited flower-like morphology and high activities for organics contaminant degradation.•The mechanisms of charge separation in the QDs-Cu2O/BiOBr composites were proposed. Here we report a highly efficient novel photocatalyst consisting of Cu2O quantum dots (QDs) incorporated into three-dimensional (3D) flower-like hierarchical BiOBr (hereafter designated QDs-Cu2O/BiOBr), which were synthesized via a simple reductive solution chemistry route and applied to decontaminate the hazardous wastewater containing phenol and organic dyes. The deposition of Cu2O QDs onto the surface of the BiOBr was confirmed by structure and composition characterizations. The QDs-Cu2O/BiOBr composites exhibited superior activity for organic contaminant degradation under visible light and 3wt% QDs-Cu2O/BiOBr composite showed the highest degrade rate for phenol and methylene blue (MB), which was 11.8 times and 1.4 times than that of pure BiOBr, indicated the QDs-Cu2O/BiOBr composite has the great potential application in purifying hazardous organic contaminant. The incorporated Cu2O QDs played an important role in improving the photocatalytic performance, due to the enhancement of visible light absorption efficiency as well as the efficient separation of the photogenerated charge carriers originating from the intimately contacted interface and the well-aligned band-structures, which was confirmed by the results of PL, photocurrent and EIS measurements. The possible photocatalytic mechanism was proposed based on the experiments and theoretical results.
ISSN:0304-3894
1873-3336
DOI:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2014.08.032