Facile one-pot preparation of Cu/CuO/Cu2O heterojunction for photocatalytic applications

One-step preparation of Cu/CuO/Cu2O heterogenous structure is prepared by reacting copper acetate with ascorbic acid at 90 °C. The physiochemical properties of the prepared particles were analyzed using XRD, SEM, TEM, HR-TEM, SAED, and XPS analyses. In addition, their photocatalytic performance was investigated against three different materials (p-nitroaniline (pNA), potassium permanganate, and hexavalent chromium Cr(VI) under UV-rays. Our results showed that, the prepared particles were mainly metallic Cu NPs with the presence of CuO and Cu2O NPs as revealed by XPS analysis. The prepared Cu NPs possessed high crystallinity with FCC crystal structure and an average diameter of about 9 nm. Moreover, the prepared heterojunction showed better photocatalytic degradation abilities against p-nitroaniline compared with other pollutants, resulting in the removal of nearly 24 % after 80 min of irradiation.