PCBM nanoparticles as visible-light-driven photocatalysts for photocatalytic decomposition of organic dyes
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Research Letter
PCBM nanoparticles as visible-light-driven photocatalysts for photocatalytic decomposition of organic dyes Chanon Pornrungroj *, Tsunenobu Onodera , and Hidetoshi Oikawa (IMRAM), Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan
, Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials
Address all correspondence to Hidetoshi Oikawa at [email protected] (Received 21 September 2018; accepted 4 December 2018)
Abstract [6,6]-Phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl esters (PCBM) have emerged in recent years as important building blocks for photovoltaic devices. However, the potential of PCBM itself as a photocatalyst has not been reviewed. Here, we demonstrate PCBM nanoparticles (NPs) fabricated by the reprecipitation method as suitable photocatalysts for an effective visible-light-driven photocatalytic degradation for organic dyes. An enhanced catalytic performance of PCBM can be achieved by a simple annealing process. The present PCBM NPs outperform the state-ofthe-art P25 TiO2 and therefore highlights its potential as promising small molecule organic semiconductor photocatalysts with high photocatalytic activity and good long-term stability.
Introduction Photocatalysis processes have so far been demonstrated to be an effective way to tackle various environmental issues such as lack of clean water,[1] increasing CO2,[2] and lack of sustainable energy storage solutions.[3] The benefit of photocatalysts to drive various chemical reactions by using sunlight as an energy source is very promising, however the main challenge still remains on how to increase in efficiency and lower the costs of this process.[4] For example, TiO2, despite its low cost and high stability, it has a significant drawback—large band gap energy (3.2 eV), which only allows the utilization of ultraviolet (UV) region which accounts for less than 4% of the overall available solar energy on earth surface.[5] π-conjugated polymers and small molecule organic semiconductors (SMOSs) have been well studied for solar cell applications due to their low cost and flexibility.[6,7] Recently, π-conjugated polymers have emerged as a new alternative for metal-free visible (Vis) light-driven photocatalysts. Although many polymer systems possess promising photocatalytic properties,[8–10] most of these explored systems suffer from a high probability of electron–hole (e–h) recombination and poor long-term stability due to the oxidation of the conjugated backbone during photocatalysis,[11,12] which has gone on to provide significant challenges for the development of π-conjugated polymer photocatalysts. In contrast to
* Current address: Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK.
π-conjugated polymers, SMOSs have so far been much less explored as a photocatalyst.[13,14] [6,6]-Phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl esters (PCBM) have been widely studied as versatile N-type SMOSs for bulk-heterojunction organic photovoltaic (OPV) as they possess good solar absorption and charge-transport prop
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