Recyclable MoO3 nanobelts for photocatalytic degradation of Rhodamine B by near infrared irradiation

Abstract Molybdenum trioxide (MoO3) represented an excellent photocatalytic performance with many applications, including degradation of organic contaminants and splitting of water. This paper presented a new route to synthesize MoO3 nanobelts with high aspect ratios and crystallinity by a hydrothermal technique. This work showed that the as‐synthesized nanobelts exhibited strong photocatalytic activity to degrade an organic dye of Rhodamine B (RhB) in aqueous solution under the exposure of the light source in the near infrared wavelength range, significantly improving the photocatalytic activity of the nanobelts. The results also showed that for a small concentration of RhB at 7.5 mg/L a complete photodegradation (for a given MoO3 nanobelts quantity of 0.1 g) can be reached after exposing for 60 min. For all concentrations of the RhB solution, the photodegradation exhibited an exponential dependence on the exposure time followed by a sudden shutdown, but no complete photodegradation can be reached. Also, the residual quantity of RhB in solution after the photocatalytic reaction was determined by the initial RhB concentration. The photocatalytic degradation can be interpreted by the pseudo–first‐order equation for the absorption of liquid/solid based on solid capacity; thus, photocatalytic degradation can be attributed to the interaction between the photoexcited electrons in the substrate and the antibonding orbital of the RhB in solution. The sudden shutdown was due to the inability of the photoexcited electrons in the substrate hopping to the antibonding orbital of RhB in the presence of the RhB intermediate products from the degraded RhB. In addition, this work showed that the photocatalytic reaction can be recovered after a thermal treatment of postreacted MoO3 nanobelts, enhancing the utilization efficiency of the catalysis.