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Photoactive behavior of polyacrylonitrile fibers based on silver and zirconium co‐doped titania nanocomposites: Synthesis, characterization, and comparative study of solid‐phase photocatalytic self‐cleaning
Author(s) -
Moafi Hadi Fallah,
Shojaie Abdollah Fallah,
Zanjanchi Mohammad Ali
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.37664
Subject(s) - photocatalysis , materials science , anatase , polyacrylonitrile , thermogravimetric analysis , nanocomposite , photodegradation , diffuse reflectance infrared fourier transform , chemical engineering , scanning electron microscope , zirconium , nuclear chemistry , nanotechnology , composite material , organic chemistry , polymer , chemistry , catalysis , engineering , metallurgy
Abstract Silver and zirconium co‐doped and mono‐doped titania nanocomposites were synthesized and deposited onto polyacrylonitrile fibers via sol–gel dip‐coating method. The resulted coated‐fibers were characterized by X‐ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and BET surface area measurement. Photocatalytic activity of the TiO 2 ‐coated and TiO 2 ‐doped coated fibers were determined by photomineralization of methylene blue and Eosin Y under UV–vis light. The progress of photodegradation of dyes was monitored by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The XRD results of samples indicate that the TiO 2 , Ag‐TiO 2 , Zr‐TiO 2 , and Ag‐Zr‐TiO 2 consist of anatase phase. All samples demonstrated photo‐assisted self‐cleaning properties when exposed to UV–vis irradiation. Evaluated by decomposing dyes, photocatalytic activity of Ag–Zr co‐doped TiO 2 coated fiber was obviously higher than that of pure TiO 2 and mono‐doped TiO 2 . Our results showed that the synergistic action between the silver and zirconium species in the Ag‐Zr TiO 2 nanocomposite is due to both the structural and electronic properties of the photoactive anatase phase. These results clearly indicate that modification of semiconductor photocatalyst by co‐doping process is an effective method for increasing the photocatalytic activity. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013