A novel high-efficiency visible-light sensitive Ag2CO3 photocatalyst with universal photodegradation performances: Simple synthesis, reaction mechanism and first-principles study

A novel high-efficiency visible-light sensitive Ag2CO3 semiconductor photocatalyst was prepared by a simple ion-exchange method based on a strategy incorporating of p-block C element into a narrow bandgap Ag2O. This photocatalyst exhibits universal high-efficient degradation ability for typically several RhB, MO and MB dyes. Getting insight into degradation patterns of dyes over Ag2CO3 identifies they are self-oxidation behavior of semiconductor rather than the effect of photosensitization. The reaction mechanism investigated by a series of radical trapping experiments, not only ascertains the major photoreaction approaches of dyes on the surface of Ag2CO3, but also reveals the unique universality advantage that arises from selective using one of many activated species to decompose many kinds of dyes such as RhB, MO and MB. The theoretical calculation based on first-principles provides inherently essential evidences for high-efficient oxidation performance of Ag2CO3 photocatalyst.

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► A novel visible-light sensitive Ag2CO3 synthesized by a simple method.
► Universal and high-efficiency photodegradation performance.
► Evidence of photooxidation ability are provided by theory calculation.
► Mechanism and approaches of dyes are studied in detail.