Facile Synthesis and Characterization of Ag3PO4 Microparticles for Degradation of Organic Dyestuffs under White-Light Light-Emitting-Diode Irradiation

This study demonstrated facile synthesis of silver phosphate (Ag3PO4) photocatalysts for the degradation of organic contaminants. Ag3PO4 microparticles from different concentrations of precursor, AgNO3, were produced and characterized by scanning electron microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, and UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. Degradation rates of methylene blue (MB) and phenol were measured in the presence of microparticles under low-power white-light light-emitting-diode (LED) irradiation and the reaction rate followed pseudo-first-order kinetics. The prepared Ag3PO4 microparticles displayed considerably high photocatalytic activity (>99.8% degradation within 10 min). This can be attributed to the microparticles' large surface area, the low recombination rate of electron-hole pairs and the higher charge separation efficiency. The practicality of the Ag3PO4 microparticles was validated by the degradation of MB, methyl red, acid blue 1 and rhodamine B under sunlight in environmental water samples, demonstrating the benefit of the high photocatalytic activity from Ag3PO4 microparticles.