Synthesis of novel metal nanoparitcles/SnNb2O6 nanosheets plasmonic nanocomposite photocatalysts with enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity and mechanism insight

In this work, novel metal nanoparitcles/SnNb2O6 nanosheets(metal = Ag, Au, and Pd) plasmonic nanocomposite photocatalysts with strong interfacial interaction were successfully constructed. The metal/SnNb2O6 nanocomposites exhibit significantly enhanced visible light photocatalytic performance toward the degradation of methylene blue (MB) as compared to bare SnNb2O6. The highest photocatalytic activity was achieved over the Au/SnNb2O6 nanocomposite with Au content of 2 wt%, which was about 2.3 times higher than bare SnNb2O6. This enhancement in photocatalytic activity could be ascribed to the low recombination rate of the electron-hole pairs because of the Schottky junction formed between Au and SnNb2O6. The photocatalytic activity trend follows the order Au/SnNb2O6 > Ag/SnNb2O6 > Pd/SnNb2O6. In addition, it was demonstrated that the superoxide radicals are the main photoactive species toward photocatalytic degradation of MB over the metal/SnNb2O6 nanocomposites. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.