Plasmonic Ag Nanoparticles Decorated Acid-Aching Carbon Fibers for Enhanced Photocatalytic Reduction of CO2 into CH3OH Under Visible-Light Irradiation

In this work, acid-ached carbon fibers decorated by plasmonic Ag nanoparticles (denoted as Ag NPs/ACFs) were facile fabricated and acted as photocatalyst to convert CO2 into high value-added CH3OH. Such photocatalyst afforded a CH3OH evolution rate of 13.9 μmol g−1 h−1 without any sacrifice reagent under visible light (> 420 nm), which is 2.5 times higher than that of Ag NPs/CFs (5.5 μmol g−1 h−1). This excellent performance is ascribed to the accelerated e−/h+ pairs separation and a strong interaction between Ag NPs and carbon fibers resulted by the generation of more oxygen-containing functional groups on carbon fibers, which is caused by acid acid-aching. This study may provide an important reference for plasmonic photocatalyst in potential photocatalytic applications. The Ag NPs/ACFs was prepared by acid aching process coupled with an ultrasonic treatment, which behaved a much higher CH3OH yield than Ag NPs/CFs without acid treatment. The increased polarized oxygen-containing functional group and the favorable interaction between Ag NPs and carbon fibers should be responsible for the significant enhancements.