Effect of Ag doping on photocatalytic activity of ZnO-Al2O3 derived from LDH structure: Synthesis, characterization and experimental study

Abstract

In this research, Ag-ZnO-Al2O3 heterostructure catalyst was derived from the calcination of Ag-doped layered double hydroxide (LDH) through a solid-state process. With the aim of entirely understanding the structural and functional features, catalysts were analyzed by XRD, TGA/DTA, and FTIR techniques. The photocatalytic performance was evaluated by measuring the methyl orange (MO) photodegradation under UV irradiation. The impact of the key parameters, namely, irradiation time, catalyst dose, initial pH of solution, and the starting concentration of MO, were investigated and discussed. The characterization results exhibit a well crystallized hexagonal LDH structure. The experimental findings revealed approximately 95.8 % degradation yield after 210 min of irradiation for Ag-ZnO-Al2O3. The optimal conditions were found to be 20 mg/L of catalyst dose, 20 mg/L of MO initial concentration and initial pH of 4. In the whole, the results confirm that the Ag-ZnO-Al2O3 catalyst shows the highest adsorption and photocatalytic performances. After three recycling tests, the Ag-ZnO-Al2O3 photocatalyst maintained good recycling stability and a high photodegradation performance (90.7%). Finally, the use of Ag-ZnO-Al2O3 as heterostructure photocatalyst offer a promising approach for the degradation of more organic compounds in environmental remediation.