Abstract
Photocatalyst dissolution greatly diminishes the usability of photocatalysts in water treatments. Coating conductive polymers on the surface of photocatalysts can reduce dissolution without compromising the photocatalytic properties of the material. In this investigation, polypyrrole (PPy) and polyaniline (PANI) were used to coat two magnetic MoO3 nanoparticles with different surface chemistries. The polymer-coated MoO3@Fe3O4 nanoparticles were synthesized by optimizing the mole fractions of PPy or PANI, MoO3, and Fe3O4. The optimized PPy@ MoO3@Fe3O4 (PMF1) and PANI@MoO3@Fe3O4 (PMF2) resulted in 95.39 and 75.98% methylene blue dye removal, respectively. MoO3 dissolutions of 4.12 and 5.6% were obtained for PMF1 and PMF2, respectively, demonstrating the reduced solubility of the coated nanoparticles as compared to their uncoated counterparts (7.87% for MF1 and 18.1% for MF2). In situ small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) was utilized to investigate the polymerization kinetics of PPy and PANI on nanoparticles. The results revealed that an increase in base material oxygen vacancies resulted in the reduction of both the polymer size and the polymerization rate. This study demonstrated that SANS provides valuable insights into the polymer growth mechanisms on nanoparticle surfaces.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 12415-12428 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | ACS Applied Nano Materials |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 26 2021 |
Funding
This work was partially supported by NSF BEINM Grant 170551, the Welch Foundation Grant E−2011-20190330, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists, Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program and the Engineering Research and Development for Technology (ERDT) Sandwich Program of the College of Engineering, University of the Philippines, Diliman. The SCGSR program is administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) for the DOE. ORISE is managed by ORAU under Contract DE-SC0014664. This research used resources at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. All opinions expressed in this paper are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the policies and views of DOE, ORAU, or ORISE. The findings achieved herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. We thank Dr. Ali Ansari for providing the XRD and ATR-FTIR measurements as well as Drs. Janire Peña-Bahamonde and Hoang Nguyen for the SEM images. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Engineering Research and Development for Technology | |
| Office of Science Graduate Student Research | |
| SCGSR | |
| Sandwich Program of the College of Engineering, University of the Philippines | |
| National Science Foundation | 170551 |
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Welch Foundation | E−2011-20190330 |
| Office of Science | |
| Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists | |
| Oak Ridge Associated Universities | DE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-SC0014664 |
Keywords
- MoO
- aniline
- magnetite
- neutron scattering
- photocatalyst
- polymerization
- pyrrole