Issue 3, 2024

Precursor- and waste-free synthesis of spark-ablated nanoparticles with enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability towards airborne organic pollutant degradation

Abstract

Photocatalyst synthesis typically involves multiple steps, expensive precursors, and solvents. In contrast, spark ablation offers a simple process of electrical discharges in a gap between two electrodes made from a desirable material. This enables a precursor- and waste-free generation of pure metal oxide nanoparticles or mixtures of various compositions. This study presents a two-step method for the production of photocatalytic filters with deposited airborne MnOx, TiO2, and ZnO nanoparticles using spark ablation and calcination processes. The resulting MnOx and TiO2 filters demonstrated almost twice the activity with outstanding performance stability, as compared to sol–gel MnO2 and commercial TiO2. The introduced method is not only simple, precursor- and waste-free, and leads to superior performance for the case studied, but it also has future potential due to its versatility. It can easily produce mixed and doped materials with further improved properties, making it an interesting avenue for future research.

Graphical abstract: Precursor- and waste-free synthesis of spark-ablated nanoparticles with enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability towards airborne organic pollutant degradation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
31 mai 2023
Accepted
11 dez 2023
First published
03 jan 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2024,11, 1023-1043

Precursor- and waste-free synthesis of spark-ablated nanoparticles with enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability towards airborne organic pollutant degradation

S. Drdova, M. Gao, O. Sambalova, R. Pauer, Z. Zhou, S. Dimitriadou, A. Schmidt-Ott and J. Wang, Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2024, 11, 1023 DOI: 10.1039/D3EN00348E

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