Highly Durable Ag-CuO Heterostructure-Decorated Mesh for Efficient Oil/Water Separation and In Situ Photocatalytic Dye Degradation

[摘要] It is of great necessity yet still a challenge to develop superwetting functional interfacial materials for simultaneously separating insoluble oil and degrading soluble dye pollutants in practical wastewater. In this work, a Ag-CuO heterostructure-decorated mesh was fabricated via facile alkali etching-calcination and photoreduction approaches. The as-synthesized mesh with superhydrophilicity and underwater superoleophobicity displayed high separation efficiency (>99.998%) for diverse oil/water mixtures. Besides, it demonstrated more superior photocatalytic performance in dye degradation than those of bare CuO nanostructure-coated materials, which is primarily attributed to the intensive visible light harvesting and efficient electron-holes separation occurred on noble metal-semiconductor heterostructures. Furthermore, on account of the tenacity of Cu substrate as well as enhanced structural stability, this binary composite-decorated mesh exhibited highly reliable durability and robustness after 10 cycles of photocatalytic degradation tests, and even being ultrasonic worn for 30 min. More importantly, our developed mesh was capable of in situ catalytic degrading water-soluble organic dyes during oil/water separation under visible light irradiation. Therefore, such a dexterous and feasible strategy may afford a new route to construct bifunctional and predurable materials for actual sewage purification.

[关键词] Ag-CuO heterostructures;highly durable;in situ bifunctional;oil/water separation;photocatalytic dye degradation