Electronic structure and photocatalytic characterization of a novel photocatalyst AgAlO2

A novel photocatalyst, AgAlO2, was prepared by cation exchange reaction and characterized by powder X-ray diffraction. The result showed AgAlO2 crystallizes in the layered orthorhombic structure with space group was Pna2(1). The energy band and electronic structures of AgAlO2 were calculated based on the crystal structure. It was found that AgAlO2 is an indirect band gap semiconductor. The valence band top mainly consists of O-2p orbitals and Ag-4d orbitals and the conduction band bottom is mainly constructed of Ag-5s5p orbitals. The band gap of AgAlO2 was estimated to be about 2.8(1) eV with UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectrometry. The photocatalytic activity of AgAlO2 was characterized by photocatalytically decomposing the dye alizarin red (AR) under visible light irradiation, and AR could be decomposed about 70% under 2 h of visible light irradiation.