Molecules, Vol. 26, Pages 1149: The Effect of the Reducing Sugars in the Synthesis of Visible-Light-Active Copper(I) Oxide Photocatalyst

Molecules, Vol. 26, Pages 1149: The Effect of the Reducing Sugars in the Synthesis of Visible-Light-Active Copper(I) Oxide Photocatalyst Molecules doi: 10.3390/molecules26041149 Authors: Szilvia Fodor Lucian Baia Kornélia Baán Gábor Kovács Zsolt Pap Klara Hernadi In the present work, shape tailored Cu2O microparticles were synthesized by changing the nature of the reducing agent and studied subsequently. d-(+)-glucose, d-(+)-fructose, d-(+)xylose, d-(+)-galactose, and d-(+)-arabinose were chosen as reducing agents due to their different reducing abilities. The morpho-structural characteristics were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), while their photocatalytic activity was evaluated by methyl orange degradation under visible light (120 min). The results show that the number of carbon atoms in the sugars affect the morphology and particle size (from 250 nm to 1.2 µm), and differences in their degree of crystallinity and photocatalytic activity were also found. The highest activity was observed when glucose was used as the reducing agent.
Source: Molecules - Category: Chemistry Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research