Photocatalytic Degradation of Organic Pollutants by Al-Nps/Tio2 Nanocomposite

Photocatalysis has been widely used in the treatment of organic pollutants. With the emergence of the surface plasmon resonance effect of metal nanoparticles, many researchers have studied its application in the field of photocatalysis. At present, it is common that the surface plasmon resonance of noble metals such as Au and Ag can broaden the photocatalytic range of semiconductors to the visible light irradiation, which leading the improvement of the light utilization rate of traditional semiconductor photocatalyst. In this paper, an Al-NPs/TiO2 nanocomposite was prepared. By adjusting the structural parameters of non-noble metal Al-NPs, the surface plasmon resonance effect of Al-NPs under UV irradiation was produced to enhance the photocatalytic performance of semiconductor TiO2. Firstly, the structure and morphology of the prepared nano-photocatalysts were characterized by XRD, TEM, XPS, UV-Vis. Then, the photocatalytic properties of the Al-NPs/TiO2 nanocomposite were studied by UV irradiation of methylene blue solution containing the catalyst. The effects of different Al-NPs diameters, qualitits and Al-NPs/TiO2 prepared by different ligands on the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue were studied. Finally, the photoelectrochemical performance was tested to verify the enhanced photocatalytic performance. The results showed that when the particle size of Al-NPs was 200 nm and the mass was 13.5 mg, the Al-NPs/TiO2 nanocomposite photocatalyst composed of glutathione as the ligand bridge had the best degradation effect on methylene blue solution, and the degradation rate reached 98.99% in 50 min.