Sarapajevaite Gabriele, Morselli Davide, Baltakys Kestutis
Department of Silicate Technology, Kaunas University of Technology, Radvilenu Road 19, LT-50254 Kaunas, Lithuania.
Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental, and Materials Engineering, Università di Bologna, Via Terracini 28, 40131 Bologna, Italy.
Materials (Basel). 2022 Jul 29;15(15):5253. doi: 10.3390/ma15155253.
Most of the copper sulfide synthetic approaches developed until now are still facing issues in their procedure, such as long synthesis duration, high energetic consumption, and high implementation costs. This publication reports a facile and sustainable approach for synthesizing copper sulfides on a large scale. In particular, an industrial by-product of sulfur waste was used as a sulfurizing agent for copper sulfide synthesis in a water medium. The reaction was performed in the hydrothermal environment by following a novel proposed mechanism of copper sulfide formation. The investigation of morphological and optical properties revealed that the target products obtained by using waste possess the resembling properties as the ones synthesized from the most conventional sulfurizing agent. Since the determined band gap of synthesis products varied from 1.72 to 1.81 eV, the photocatalytic properties, triggered under visible light irradiation, were also investigated by degrading the methylene blue as a model pollutant. Importantly, the degradation efficiency of the copper sulfide synthesized from sulfur waste was equivalent to a sample obtained from a reference sulfurizing agent since the value for both samples was 96% in 180 min. This very simple synthetic approach opens up a new way for large-scale sustainable production of visible-light-driven photocatalysts for water purification from organic pollutants.
到目前为止，大多数已开发的硫化铜合成方法在其工艺过程中仍面临问题，例如合成时间长、能源消耗高和实施成本高。本出版物报道了一种大规模合成硫化铜的简便且可持续的方法。具体而言，一种硫废料的工业副产品被用作水介质中硫化铜合成的硫化剂。该反应在水热环境中按照一种新提出的硫化铜形成机制进行。对形态和光学性质的研究表明，使用废料获得的目标产物具有与由最传统的硫化剂合成的产物相似的性质。由于合成产物的测定带隙在1.72至1.81电子伏特之间变化，因此还通过降解亚甲基蓝作为模型污染物来研究在可见光照射下引发的光催化性能。重要的是，由硫废料合成的硫化铜的降解效率与从参考硫化剂获得的样品相当，因为两个样品在180分钟内的值均为96%。这种非常简单的合成方法为大规模可持续生产用于从有机污染物中净化水的可见光驱动光催化剂开辟了一条新途径。
