Fabrication and Photocatalytic Activity of Tunable Triangular- and Circular-Like Ag/AgCl Nanoplates

Triangular- and circular-like Ag/AgCl nanoplates with various edge length and thickness have been successfully synthesized by a facile in situ oxidation process. Uniform Ag triangular nanoplates with tunable sizes and thicknesses obtained by adjusting the adding amounts of trisodium citrate and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) were employed as Ag precursors to form triangular- and circular-like Ag/AgCl heterostructures by changing the adding amounts of FeCl3 in the reaction process. The morphological evolution mechanism of Ag nanoplates and Ag/AgCl heterostructures was discussed. It is clear that the morphologies of Ag/AgCl products can be gradually converted from the large and thick triangular-like nanoplates into the small and thin circular-like ones as the AgCl ratio increasing from 5 to 100%, which can be mainly assigned to the synergistic effect of the oxidation of Fe3+ and the etching action of Cl-. The photocatalytic results indicate that Ag/AgCl nanoplates with different ratios of AgCl can exhibit good photocatalytic activity for degradation of methyl orange (MO) pollutant under ultraviolet-light-driven (UVD) and visible-light-driven (VLD) irradiation, respectively. The Ag/AgCl nanoplates with an AgCl ratio of 30% have the superior photocatalytic activity with the photocatalytic efficiency calculated to be 83.5% within 160 min under UVD irradiation and 53.6% within 240 min under VLD irradiation, respectively, owing to the combination of the favorable crystallinity, excellent photoabsorption, and the efficient separation of the photo-induced carriers between Ag and AgCl.