Tuning the structural, optical, and photocatalytic properties of V 2 O 5 /PMMA nanocomposite films for methylene blue photodegradation

Abstract

In this work, the Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) films have been developed for the photodegradation of methylene blue (MB) by incorporating vanadium pentaoxide (V2O5) catalysts. The obtained films were characterized by SEM, XRD, UV-Vis, FTIR and Raman spectroscopy. The XRD patterns revealed the amorphous domains of the PMMA polymer, with an increase in these domains with increasing the V2O5 content. Moreover, the XRD showed shifts of 2θ from 16.55° to 17.8°, which can be attributed to the structural irregularity of the PMMA backbone chain caused by the nanofiller doping with no impurity peaks. The observed SEM images showed that V2O5 has a hierarchical nanobelt interconnected structure with thicknesses of 30–150 nm and 50–300 nm in length. According to UV-Vis spectroscopy measurements, the absorbance shifts towards a longer wavelength (270–330 nm) and exhibits intensity increase as V2O5 nanoparticles amount increase. The band gap of PMMA was decreased after the incorporation of V2O5 NPs. The optical conductivity σop exhibits an increase in the photon energy window (3.8 eV-4.2 eV) by values (2x1011 – 7x1011) as the V2O5 nanoparticles ratio content increases. Interestingly, the 3.3 wt% V2O5/PMMA photocatalyst film exhibited the highest photocatalytic degradation of MB (97%) after 45 minutes of UV illumination.