Au nanoparticles dispersed polypyrrole-carbon black/SrTiO3 nanocomposite photocatalyst with rapid and stable photocatalytic performance

The current chaotic environmental situation especially water pollution prerequisites efficient novel photocatalysts for the proper treatment of these toxic structures through advanced oxidation process. However, the development of active photocatalytic structures requires further committed effort to ensure proper designing and essential band gap. In this report, an attempt has been made to fabricate a rapid and efficient photocatalyst based on SrTiO3 nanostructures, polypyrrole doped carbon black (PPyC) and Au nanoparticles to tackle serious problems of water contamination. Au@PPyC/SrTiO3 ternary photocatalyst was smoothly fabricated by sol gel route followed by ultrasonication and photoreduction technique. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) studies revealed that SrTiO3 have cubic perovskite structure, while X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) confirmed the formation of ternary framework among Au, PPyC and SrTiO3 nanostructures. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed that SrTiO3 possessed irregular porous nanoparticles ranging from 10 to 100 nm, whereas the PPyC appeared as well-ordered chain of beads or interconnected branches of nanoparticles. Modification of bare SrTiO3 to Au@PPyC/SrTiO3 significantly increases the surface area to 2.48 times than that of SrTiO3. The photocatalytic performance of the newly developed Au@PPyC/SrTiO3 photocatalyst has been tested on insecticide imidacloprid and on methylene blue (MB) dye. The current Au@PPyC/SrTiO3 photocatalytic framework exhibited ultrafast skills by removing 96.65% of imidacloprid just in 15 min and found to be ∼3.5 times more effective than bare SrTiO3. Besides this Au@PPyC/SrTiO3 photocatalyst was proven to be extremely destructive for resistant MB dye structure.