Convenient and green soft chemical route to cuprous oxide films and their visible-light photocatalytic properties
- Author(s): Haiyan Zheng 1 ; Qing Li 1 ; Yongping Zhang 1 ; Lizhao Qin 1 ; Hua Lin 1 ; Ming Nie 1
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Volume 10, Issue 10,
October 2015,
p.
554 – 557
DOI: 10.1049/mnl.2015.0100 , Online ISSN 1750-0443
Cuprous oxide (Cu2O) films have been synthesised by a convenient and green soft chemical route at room temperature. The films were obtained through the chemical reduction of copper acetate by ascorbic acid in solutions with ethylene glycol and deionised water. X-ray diffraction, energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy, as well as UV–Vis spectroscopy (UV-Vis) were used to characterise the resulting films. It was obvious from the SEM image that the obtained films were composed of nanosphere particles with a size of 100–400 nm. The photocatalytic activity of degradation of methyl orange (MO) of the obtained Cu2O films, H2O2 and H2O2/Cu2O films system under visible light irradiation was also investigated. The results have shown that the system exhibits high catalytic ability under visible light irradiation. Also, there was a strong synergistic effect between the obtained Cu2O films and H2O2 when the system was used to degrade MO.
Inspec keywords: atomic force microscopy; photochemistry; ultraviolet spectra; nanoparticles; catalysis; copper compounds; semiconductor thin films; semiconductor growth; semiconductor materials; scanning electron microscopy; dyes; liquid phase deposition; X-ray diffraction; visible spectra; nanofabrication; X-ray chemical analysis
Other keywords: ethylene glycol; chemical reduction; ascorbic acid; atomic force microscopy; nanosphere particles; SEM; copper acetate; visible-light photocatalytic properties; X-ray diffraction; methyl orange degradation; green soft chemical synthesis; visible light irradiation; cuprous oxide films; scanning electron microscopy; Cu2O; deionised water; energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry; temperature 293 K to 298 K; UV-vis spectroscopy
Subjects: Thin film growth, structure, and epitaxy; Nanofabrication using thin film deposition methods; Heterogeneous catalysis at surfaces and other surface reactions; Optical properties of other inorganic semiconductors and insulators (thin films, low-dimensional and nanoscale structures); Visible and ultraviolet spectra of other nonmetals; Deposition from liquid phases; Nanometre-scale semiconductor fabrication technology; Photolysis and photodissociation by IR, UV and visible radiation; Deposition from liquid phases (melts and solutions); Electromagnetic radiation spectrometry (chemical analysis); Structure of solid clusters, nanoparticles, nanotubes and nanostructured materials; Oxide and ferrite semiconductors
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