Deposition-precipitation preparation of Ag/Ag3PO4/WO3 nanocomposites for efficient Visible-light degradation of rhodamine B under strongly acidic/alkaline conditions

A series of novel visible-light-driven Ag/Ag3PO4/WO3 (AAPW) Z-scheme heterostructures were fabricated using a facile deposition-precipitation method followed by photo-reduction without adding any surfactant. To explore more deeply about the photocatalytic activity of AAPW nanocomposites under neutral and strongly acidic/alkaline conditions, we investigated their photocatalytic rhodamine B (RhB) efficiency at different pH value that was controlled by adding HNO3 or NaOH aqueous solution. It was found that as prepared AAPW photocatalysts showed enhanced photocatalytic RhB efficiency under neutral and even strongly acidic/alkaline environment. The process of charge carrier separation and transfer in the AAPW nanocomposites and Z-scheme mechanism for RhB degradation were described in sufficient detail based on systematical characterizations and measurements. The silver particles introduced to build AAPW Z-scheme structure should contribute to more efficient charge separation, resulting in enhanced photocurrent response and photocatalytic activity. We expect that this work will provide systematic study concerning Z-scheme Ag/Ag3PO4/WO3 structure, and fulfill the research about photodegrade activity of catalyst under strongly acidic/alkaline conditions. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.