A novel Z-scheme WO3/CdWO4 photocatalyst with enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity for the degradation of organic pollutants

Imran Aslam; Chuanbao Cao; M. Tanveer; M. Hassan Farooq; Waheed S. Khan; Muhammad Tahir; Faryal Idrees; Syed Khalid

doi:10.1039/C4RA15847D

A novel Z-scheme WO₃/CdWO₄ photocatalyst with enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity for the degradation of organic pollutants†

Imran Aslam,^a Chuanbao Cao,*^a M. Tanveer,^a M. Hassan Farooq,^b Waheed S. Khan,^a Muhammad Tahir,^a Faryal Idrees^a and Syed Khalid^a

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* Corresponding authors

^a Research Centre of Materials Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, P. R. China
E-mail: cbcao@bit.edu.cn

^b Laboratory of Eco-Materials and Sustainable Technology, The Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, Xinjiang 830011, P. R. China

Abstract

A novel Z-scheme WO₃/CdWO₄ photocatalyst has been fabricated with sheet-like tungsten trioxide (WO₃) hybridized by rod-like cadmium tungstate (CdWO₄) via a hydrothermal and chemisorption method. The as-synthesized WO₃/CdWO₄ photocatalyst exhibited enhanced photocatalytic efficiency for the degradation of different organic dyes under visible light irradiation. It was found that the photocatalytic performance of the composite WO₃/CdWO₄ was much higher than that of either WO₃ or CdWO₄ for the degradation of each organic dye. The highest activity of the composite was recorded for the degradation of MB which was about 7 times greater than pure CdWO₄ and 2.3 times that of pure WO₃. The enhanced performance of the photocatalyst was mainly attributed to the increased surface area and introduction of WO₃ into the composite sample, which can induce higher adsorption activity for organic dyes and increased electron–hole separation at the interface between two semiconductors by establishing an inner electric field.

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/C4RA15847D
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 05 Dec 2014
Accepted: 11 Dec 2014
First published: 15 Dec 2014

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RSC Adv., 2015,5, 6019-6026

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A novel Z-scheme WO₃/CdWO₄ photocatalyst with enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity for the degradation of organic pollutants

I. Aslam, C. Cao, M. Tanveer, M. H. Farooq, W. S. Khan, M. Tahir, F. Idrees and S. Khalid, RSC Adv., 2015, 5, 6019 DOI: 10.1039/C4RA15847D

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