Morphological syntheses and photocatalytic properties of well-defined sub-100 nm Ag/AgCl nanocrystals by a facile solution approach

Large-scale syntheses of uniform AgCl nanocubes and nanospheres with sub-100 nm size have been achieved by the reaction of AgNO3 and CCl4 in a solvothermal system with polyvinylpyrrolidone as a capping agent. The reaction time and temperature have been proved to be the key factors for the morphological evolution of the AgCl nanocrystals. In addition, an interesting AgCl micro-tetrahedron structure can be obtained with dichloroethane instead of CCl4 as the chlorine source. The synthesized products are characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, UV-vis spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The growth mechanism of the AgCl crystals is proposed. The AgCl products can be converted to plasmonic Ag/AgCl photocatalysts under UV-light irradiation, which exhibit excellent photocatalytic activity for the degradation of the organic contaminant of Rhodamine B. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.