Highly efficient ozone elimination by metal doped ultra-fine Cu2O nanoparticles

Nowadays, ozone contamination becomes dominant in air and thus challenges the research and development of cost-effective catalyst. In this study, metal doped Cu2O catalysts are synthesized via reduction of Cu2+ by ascorbic acid in base solutions containing doping metal ions. The results show that compared with pure Cu2O, the Mg2+ and Fe2+ dopants enhance the O-3 removal efficiency while Ni2+ depresses the activity. In specific, Mg-Cu2O shows high O-3 removal efficiency of 88.4% in harsh environment of 600,000 mL/(g center dot hr) space velocity and 1500 ppmV O-3, which is one of the highest in the literature. Photoluminescence and electron paramagnetic spectroscopy characterization shows higher concentration of crystal defects induced by the Mg2+ dopants, favoring the O-3 degradation. The in-situ diffuse reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy shows the intermediate species in the O-3 degradation process change from O-2(2-) dominant of pure Cu2O to O-2(-) dominant of Mg-Cu2O, which would contribute to the high activity. All these results show the promising prospect of the Mg-Cu2O for highly efficiency O-3 removal. (c) 2022 The Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V.