Enhanced photocatalytic activity of Ag3PO4 photocatalyst via glucose-based carbonsphere modification

A novel Ag3PO4@glucose-based carbon sphere photocatalyst (CS-Ag3PO4) was synthesized through the growth of carbon sphere on Ag3PO4 particles, and was applied into photocatalytic degradation of Methyl Orange (MO) under visible-light irradiation. CS-Ag3PO4 was characterized by X-ray diffractometry, transmission electron microscopy, ultraviolet-visible absorption spectroscopy and photo-luminescence spectroscopy. We found CS-Ag3PO4 significantly promoted the MO degradation under artificial sunlight irradiation. The visible-light photocatalytic activity was maximized at the dose of 5 mg/L CS-Ag3PO4, which obviously maintained the high activity even after five cycles. The remarkable enhancement of photocatalytic activity could be mainly attributed to the slow recombination between photo-induced carriers and the strong visible-light absorption ability. On basis of experiments, was proposed a possible mechanism for the photocatalytic activity enhancement was the presence of 'OH. This study contributes to the promising applications of carbon sphere in photocatalysis. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.