ZnO/Silver Nanocubes Nanocomposites: Preparation, Characterization, and Scrutiny of Plasmon-Induced Photocatalysis Activity

In this paper, scrutiny was performed on ZnO/silver nanocubes nanocomposites and their plasmon-induced photocatalytic activity. First, to prepare such nanocomposites, silver nanocubes with two different edge lengths were synthesized and then mixed with synthesized ZnO nanoparticles. Next, photocatalytic performance of the composites consisting of the plasmonic silver nanocubes and ZnO nanoparticles were investigated. Compared with the pure ZnO, these composites exhibited a significant enhancement in photocatalytic activities. Subsequently, the investigation of main mechanisms governing the plasmon-induced photocatalysis activity of nanocomposites showed that the localized surface plasmon resonance-induced radiative energy transfer from silver nanocubes to the ZnO nanoparticles can lead to improving the photocatalytic activity. It was also found that the photocatalytic activity enhancement was depended on both the edge length and the concentration of the silver nanocubes in the composites. Our researches showed that the highest photocatalytic activity enhancement would be observed for the composite containing 4.5 wt % of silver nanocubes with the average edge length of 65 nm in comparison to the pure ZnO nanoparticles. Furthermore, a little photocatalytic activity enhancement for ZnO/gold nanospheres composites in comparison to the composites containing silver nanocubes was observed that it can be ascribed to the absence of spectral overlap between spectra of LSPR extinction of gold nanospheres, the absorption of semiconductor, and the source.