Rare Ag nanoparticles loading induced surface-enhanced pollutant adsorption and photocatalytic degradation on Ti3C2Tx MXene-based nanosheets

MXene has gradually become hot photocatalyst in recent years due to its unique properties. This work successfully synthesized rare Ag-doped partial etched Ti3C2Tx/Ti3AlC2 composite nanosheets via a reduction process. The obtained ternary Ti3C2Tx/Ti3AlC2@Ag can be deemed a promising photocatalyst in photodegradation fields. Ti3C2Tx/Ti3AlC2@Ag-50 exhibited excellent catalytic degradation performance towards methylene blue (MB), Rhodamine B (RhB) and methylene orange (MO), with the obtained degradation efficiency of 99.7%, 98.9% and 99.3%, respectively. Furthermore, there is a synergistic effect between Ag nanoparticles and partial etched Ti3C2Tx/Ti3AlC2 nanosheets, as demonstrated by the transfer of photogenerated carriers and the generation of reactive oxygen species, which can improve the catalytic degradation performance of the three organic dye molecules.