Gold nanoparticle-decorated keggin ions/TiO2 photococatalyst for improved solar light photocatalysis

We demonstrate a facile localized reduction approach to synthesizing a Au nanoparticle-decorated Keggin ion/ TiO2 photococatalyst for improved solar light photocatalysis application. This has been achieved by exploiting the ability of TiO2-bound Keggin ions to act as a UV-switchable, highly localized reducing agent. Notably, the approach proposed here does not lead to contamination of the resultant cocatalyst with free metal nanoparticles during aqueous solution-based synthesis. The study shows that for Keggin ions (phosphotungstic acid, PTA), being photoactive molecules, the presence of both Au nanoparticles and PTA on the TiO2 surface in a cocatalytic system can have a dramatic effect on increasing the photocatalytic performance of the composite system, as opposed to a TiO2 surface directly decorated with metal nanoparticles without a sandwiched PTA layer. The remarkable increase in the photocatalytic performance of these materials toward the degradation of a model organic Congo red dye correlates to an increase of 2.7-fold over that of anatase TiO2 after adding Au to it and 4.3-fold after introducing PTA along with Au to it. The generalized localized reduction approach to preparing TiO2 PTA Au cocatalysts reported here can be further extended to other similar systems, wherein a range of metal nanoparticles in the presence of different Keggin ions can be utilized. The composites reported here may have wide potential implications toward the degradation of organic species and solar cell applications.