Ag<sub>2</sub>O/ZnO Heterostructures with Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity

A simple route has been developed for the synthesis of Ag 2 O/ZnO heterostructures and the samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy analysis. Considering the porous structure of Ag 2 O/ZnO, the photocatalytic degradation for the organic dyes, such as eosin red (ER), methyl orange (MO), methylene blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RhB), under visible light irradiation was investigated in detail. Noticeably, Ag 2 O/ZnO just took 40 min to degrade 96 % MB. The rate of degradation using the Ag 2 O/ZnO heterostructures was 2.3 times faster than that of the bare porous ZnO nanospheres under visible light irradiation due to that the recombination of the photogenerated charge was inhibited greatly in the p-type Ag 2 O and n-type ZnO semiconductor. So the Ag 2 O/ZnO heterostuctures showed the potential application on environmental remediation.