Photocatalytic Performances of Ag3PO4 Polypods for Degradation of Dye Pollutant under Natural Indoor Weak Light Irradiation.

It is still a big challenge for Ag3PO4 to be applied in practice mainly because of its low stability resistant to photo corrosion, although it is an efficient photocatalyst. Herein, we have mainly investigated its activity and stability under indoor weak light for the degradation of dye pollutants. It is amazing that under indoor weak light irradiation, rhodamine B (RhB) can be completely degraded by Ag3PO4 polypods after 36 h, but only 18% of RhB by N-doped TiO2 after 120 h. It is found that under indoor weak light irradiation, the degradation rate (0.08099 h(-1)) of RhB over Ag3PO4 polypods are 46 times higher than that (0.00173 h(-1)) of N-doped TiO2. The high activity of Ag3PO4 polypods are mainly attributed to the three-dimensional branched nanostructure and high-energy {110} facets exposed. After three cycles, surprisingly, Ag3PO4 polypods show a high stability under indoor weak light irradiation, whereas Ag3PO4 have been decomposed into Ag under visible light irradiation with an artificial Xe light source. This natural weak light irradiation strategy could be a promising method for the other unstable photocatalysts in the degradation of environmental pollutants.