Self-standing Ag2O@YSZ-TiO2 p-n nanoheterojunction composite nanofibrous membranes with superior photocatalytic activity

•Self-standing Ag2O@YSZ-TiO2 p-n nanofibrous photocatalyst membrane was firstly designed and fabricated by electrospinning technique and precipitation process.•Ag2O@YSZ-TiO2 photocatalytic nanofibrous membranes exhibit superior photocatalytic activity and robust reversibility in degrading methylene blue.•This work shows a new insight to development of flexible and high-efficiency nanoheterojunction nanocrystalline photocatalyst membrane.

Study of high-efficiency and free secondary pollution TiO2 based photocatalyst has become the one of the most urgent problems in improving the decolorization effect of the waste water from printing and dyeing mill. In this work, a novel self-standing Ag2O@YSZ-TiO2 p-n nanoheterojunction nanofibrous membrane was designed for ultraviolet (UV) photocatalyst by a facile combination of electrospinning technique and precipitation process. Moreover, the UV photocatalytic performance of the flexible AZT p-n nanoheterojuction nanofibrous membranes with a band gap energy of 2.89 eV and good reversibility of 5 cycles, was superior to the commercial catalyst P25 for photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue. Furthermore, the photocatalytic mechanism of the flexible Ag2O@YSZ-TiO2 nanofibrous photocatalyst was proposed by the electron transition in Ag2O/TiO2 p-n nanoheterojunction, which showed a new insight to development of flexible and high-efficiency nanoheterojunction nanocrystalline photocatalytic membranes.

Graphical abstractNovel self-standing Ag2O@YSZ-TiO2 p-n nanoheterojunction hierarchical composite nanofibrous membranes with excellent reversibility were designed for high-efficiency ultraviolet photocatalyst.Download high-res image (256KB)Download full-size image