Photocatalytic activity of ZnO doped with Ag on the degradation of endocrine disrupting under UV irradiation and the investigation of its antibacterial activity

Ag-doped ZnO photocatalysts with different Ag molar content (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 and 4.0%) were prepared via hydrothermal method. The X-ray diffraction (XRD), Nitrogen physisorption at 77K, Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), UV--Visible spectroscopy, Photoluminescence spectra (PL) and Raman spectroscopy were used to characterize the structural, textural and optical properties of the samples. The results showed that Ag-doping does not change the average crystallite size with the Ag low content (<1.0%) but slightly decreases with Ag high content (>1.0%). The specific surface area (SBET) increases with the increase of the Ag content. The band gap values of ZnO are decreased with the increase of the Ag doping level. The results of the photocatalytic degradation of bisphenol A (BPA) and nonylphenol (NP) in aqueous solutions under UV irradiation and in the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) showed that silver ions doping greatly improved the photocatalytic efficiency of ZnO. The TOC conversion BPA and NP are 72.1% and 81.08% respectively obtained using 1% Ag-doped ZnO. The enhancement of photocatalytic activity is ascribed to the fact that the modification of ZnO with an appropriate amount of Ag can increase the separation efficiency of the photogenerated electrons-holes in ZnO. The antibacterial activity of the catalysts which uses Escherichia coli as a model for Gram-negative bacteria confirmed that Ag-doped ZnO possessed more antibacterial activity than the pure ZnO. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.