Silver nanoparticles on amidoxime fibers for photo-catalytic degradation of organic dyes in waste water

Herein we report that a new photo-catalyst of silver nanoparticles attached on the surface of amidoxime fibers was developed and evaluated. The nanoparticles had different sizes from tens to hundreds of nanometers and varied shapes of cube, plate, and sphere; and there were coordination interactions between the nanoparticles and the amidoxime fibers. The developed photo-catalyst demonstrated high activities for degradation of an organic dye of methyl orange, particularly under sunlight; and the catalyst could be re-activated for several times by simple tetrahydrofuran treatment. The results also suggested that the silver nanoparticles initiated and/or mediated the photo-oxidation reaction of methyl orange through localized surface plasmon resonance under sunlight, and the photo-catalytic activities were primarily determined by sizes and/or surface-to-mass ratios instead of shapes of the silver nanoparticles.