Monolithic Cu2O-CuO/Cu Mesh Catalyst for Ambient Ozone Removal

Nowadays, it is highly desired to decompose near-ground O3, as it is not only harmful to humans but also can react with other gases to form secondary pollutants because of its strong oxidizing properties. Here, a monolithic Cu2O-CuO/Cu mesh catalyst is fabricated by a facile thermal oxidation and reduction (at 350 °C) method using Cu mesh. The as-synthesized catalyst can maintain 98% conversion for 5 h to 0.34 ppm of O3, at space velocity of 23,000 h-1 and RH 45% which is one of the highest in the literature. The high catalytic activity of the samples can be assigned to the interconversion of Cu+ and Cu2+, more oxygen vacancies, and hole carriers in the p-p heterojunction of CuO-Cu2O. As a proof of concept, it maintains 100% conversion efficiency to ambient O3 for more than 10 h at 0.08 ppm and RH 45% when used in conjunction with a mask. All these results show the promise of this monolithic O3 catalyst on Cu mesh by the facile fabrication method for ambient O3 removal.