Double-sided plasmonic silver nanoparticles decorated copper oxide/zinc oxide heterostructured nanomaces with improving photocatalytic performance

The CuO/ZnO heterostructured nanomaces can be directly grown on the copper gauze substrates with CuO nanowires by a wet chemical approach at the lower reaction temperature. The concentration of ZnO precursor can easily control the sizes of ZnO branched nanowires. CuO/ZnO heterostructured nanomaces presented superior photocatalytic activity toward rhodamine 6 G removal compared with commercial ZnO or TiO2 nano particles under low-powered UV-light irradiation. Further investigation has revealed that CuO/ZnO heterostructured nanomaces significantly improved activity as a recyclable photocatalyst for the degradation of rhodamine 6 G. Also, the uniform sizes of Ag nanoparticles can decorate onto the interface and surface of CuO/ ZnO heterostructured nanomaces via a sample ion-beam sputtering method. The quaternary CuO/Ag/ZnO/Ag heterostructured nanomaces can provide the adequate separation of photoinduced electron-hole pairs and more surface active sites, which exhibited a higher photocatalytic efficiency rather than CuO/ZnO heterostructured nanomaces.