In-situ synthesis of amorphous silver silicate/carbonate composites for selective visible-light photocatalytic decomposition

Coupling two different semiconductors to form composite photocatalysts is an extremely significant technique for environmental remediation. Here, a one-step in-situ precipitation method has been developed to prepare amorphous silver silicate/carbonate (AgSiO/Ag(2)CO(3)) nanoparticles (NPs) composites, which are well dispersed sphere-like particles with the sizes of around ~50–100 nm. The high-efficiency photocatalytic activities under visible light (VL) have been carefully evaluated, and the AgSiO/Ag(2)CO(3) NPs composites exhibit selective photocatalytic degradations on Methylene Blue (MB) and Rhodamine B (RhB). The maximum degradation rate for MB can reach ~99.1% within ~40 min under VL irradiation, much higher than that of RhB (~12%) in the same condition, which can be ascribed to (I) the smaller molecule size of MB than that of RhB, (II) the fast charge separation between AgSiO NPs and Ag(2)CO(3) NPs, abundant heterojunction interfaces as well as fully exposed reactive sites. These composites are proposed to be an example for the preparation of other silicate composite photocatalysts for practical applications in environmental remediation.