Ag-Nanoparticle-Decorated SiO₂ Nanospheres Exhibiting Remarkable Plasmon-Mediated Photocatalytic Properties

Abstract

We demonstrated for the first time that Agnanoparticle-decorated SiO 2 nanospheres (NSs) may display noticeable photocatalytic activities upon surface plasmon resonance (SPR) excitation. The samples were prepared by reacting SiO 2 NSs with AgNO 3 in the seed-mediated growth process, from which the Ag particle size and decoration density can be readily controlled. The dependence of the SPR-mediated photocatalytic performance of Ag-decorated SiO 2 NSs on the Ag morphology was investigated and presented. The as-prepared Agdecorated SiO 2 NSs showed a significantly red shifted and relatively broad SPR absorption when compared with the individually dispersed Ag nanoparticles. Owing to the considerably broad SPR absorption that spanned from the visible to the near-infrared region, Ag-decorated SiO 2 NSs surpassed N-doped P-25 TiO 2 powder and individually dispersed Ag nanoparticles in photocatalytic activity, demonstrating their potential as an active photocatalyst in nearly all the current photocatalysis applications. Furthermore, the result of performance evaluation under natural sunlight shows that the present Ag-decorated SiO 2 NSs can be used as highly efficient photocatalysts that may practically harvest energy from sunlight. The current study provides a new paradigm for designing plasmonic metal nanostructures that can effectively absorb the entire solar spectrum and beyond for solar fuel generation.

Fabrication and Photocatalytic Properties of TiO2/Reduced Graphene Oxide/Ag Nanocomposites with UV/Vis Response

“…Notably, no diffraction peaks corresponding to rGO or Ag were observed, owing to the low amount of rGO and the small size of the Ag nanoparticles. [17,46,47] The existence of Ag nanoparticles was evidenced by TEM and was also could further evidenced by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements. The surface compositions and elemental chemical states of the TGA composite were characterized by using XPS.…”

Fabrication of Ag/halloysite nanotubes/Fe3O4nanocatalyst and their catalytic performance in 4-nitrophenol reduction

“…For the HNTs sample, the observed peaks at 20.01, 24.79, and 29.98 can be indexed to the characteristic peaks of halloysite [39]. However, the two new peaks at 35.6˚and 43.2˚, which can be indexed as (311) and (400) [41], respectively. Moreover, no diffraction peaks corresponding to silver oxide were observed, which confirmed that only metallic Ag was formed by chemical reduction method.…”

Facile synthesis of microporous SiO2/triangular Ag composite nanostructures for photocatalysis

“…Scheme 1 Synthesis of microporous silica nanoparticles have been investigated for plasmon-mediated photocatalysis (Chen et al 2012). However, microporous SiO 2 /blue Ag composite nanostructures have not been reported to the best of our knowledge.…”