Ag/AgCl plasmonic cubes with ultrahigh activity as advanced visible-light photocatalysts for photodegrading dyes

Abstract

Among numerous visible-light photocatalysts, plasmonic structure is a promising photocatalyst for photodegradation and energy generation. Ag/AgCl composite as an alternative visible-light photocatalyst has attracted extensive interests; however, its syntheses has many visible flaws, e.g. high temperature environment, requirement of various templates or additives, complicated synthetic procedures and impurities in the final products. For these issues, herein, we report, for the first time, a simple, facile, rapid and green technique to synthesize Ag/AgCl heterostructured cubes using a one-step process of laser irradiation in liquids. The fabricated Ag/AgCl cubes possess some active {111} facets and a high visible-light utilization efficiency induced by the localized surface plasmon resonance (SPR) from the Ag/AgCl heterostructure. As plasmonic photocatalysts, these Ag/AgCl cubes exhibited excellent photodegrading performance for dye molecules of methyl orange, Rhodamine B and methylene blue, and the photodegradation rates were about 0.268, 0.057, and 0.094 min⁻¹, which are considerably higher than that of commercial Ag₃PO₄ by a factor of 29.8, 3.8 and 6.7, respectively. The high photo-stability of the Ag/AgCl cubes was also demonstrated. The SPR-mediated photocatalytic mechanism was proposed to address the ultrahigh activity of the Ag/AgCl heterostructure as an advanced visible-light photocatalyst. These results showed the broad applicability of the developed technique for accessing a new plasmonic photocatalyst with high-performance.