Synthesis of ternary Ag/ZnO/ZnFe2O4 porous and hollow nanostructures with enhanced photocatalytic activity

Highly uniform Ag/ZnO/ZnFe2O4 ternary composites with porous and hollow nanostructures are synthesized using Ag-loaded Prussian blue analogue Zn3Fe(CN)(6)center dot xH(2)O (Ag-ZnPBA) as the precursor via a facile calcination process. The cubic morphology of the precursor is well inherited after the calcination process. The microstructures of the ternary composites can be tuned from porous to hollow interiors by simply changing the heating modes. The loading amount of Ag in the composites can be adjusted by controlling the initial adsorption amount of Ag+ ions on the metal-organic framework of ZnPBA. The as synthesized ternary Ag/ZnO/ZnFe2O4 shows significantly enhanced photocatalytic activity towards the degradation of organic dye as compared to the binary counterpart of ZnO/ZnFe2O4, demonstrating the important role of Ag for the photocatalytic process. It seems that the combination of the three components of Ag, ZnO, ZnFe2O4 can form type-II band alignment and Schottky barrier, which would inhibit the recombination of photo-generated electrons and holes. Moreover, benefited from the excellent magnetic property of ZnFe2O4, the composite photocatalysts can be easily recovered from reaction systems by a magnet. This work presents a facile and effective route for the construction of uniform multi-component nanocomposites with intriguing structures and multiple functions. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.