Synthesis of Ag/ZnO nanostructures by different methods and investigation of their photocatalytic efficiency for 4-nitrophenol degradation

Ag/ZnO photocatalysts with different Ag loadings were prepared by photo reduction (AnZ2), chemical reduction (AnZ3) and polyacrylamide-gel (AnZ1) methods. Among the catalysts, the best photocatalytic performance for degradation of 4-nitrophenol was exhibited for Ag/ZnO prepared by polyacrylamide gel method. •Ag/ZnO is prepared by photo and chemical reduction and polyacrylamide-gel methods.•Ag/ZnO photocatalysts with different Ag loadings are synthesized.•Ag/ZnO is used for photodegradation of 4-nitrophenol.•Among the catalysts, Ag/ZnO prepared by polyacrylamide-gel method showed higher, performance. In this paper, Ag/ZnO photocatalysts with different Ag loadings were prepared by photo reduction, chemical reduction and polyacrylamide-gel methods. The Ag/ZnO photocatalysts were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, EDS and DRUV–vis methods. The results of the photocatalytic degradation of 4-NP in aqueous suspensions showed that silver ions doping greatly improved the photocatalytic efficiency of ZnO nanocrystallites. The enhancement of photocatalytic activity is due to the fact that the modification of ZnO with an appropriate amount of Ag can increase the separation efficiency of photogenerated electrons and holes in ZnO, and the improvement of photo stability of ZnO is attributed to a considerable decrease of the surface defect sites of ZnO after the Ag loading. The chemisorptions of molecular oxygen and the chemisorption of atomic oxygen on Ag in the Ag/ZnO photocatalysts were observed. It was found that the metallic Ag in the Ag/ZnO photocatalysts does play a new role of O2 chemisorption sites except for electron acceptor, by which chemisorbed molecular oxygen reacts with photogenerated electrons to form active oxygen species, and thus facilitates the trapping of photogenerated electrons and further improves the photocatalytic activity of the Ag/ZnO photocatalysts. Also the method of preparation is regarded as important factors for determining photocatalysis. The best photocatalytic performance was exhibited for Ag/ZnO prepared by polyacrylamide gel method in comparison with chemical reduction and photo reduction method and the optimum Ag content was approximately 0.5%.