Conductive polymer, poly(n-methyl aniline) spheres, silver nanoparticles, photocatalyst, environmental remediation

Due to the easy preparation, low cost besides combining the electrical properties of a semiconductor and metals, conducting polymers (CPs) nowadays attracts great attention to academia and industry. In this thesis, a multi-component visible-lightdriven photocatalyst having the structure; poly(N-methyl aniline) silver nanoparticles (PNMA-AgNPs) was successfully prepared by using oxidative chemical polymerization and liquid impregnation methods, respectively. Characterization of resulting particles was performed by using SEM, TEM, EDX, XPS, FTIR, and ICP-OES. According to that characterization, PNMA nanospheres with a size of around 300 nm were prepared and 3 nm silver nanoparticles were successfully added onto them. After that, the potential of PNMA-AgNPs composite material in the degradation of dye molecules under solar light was investigated. The silver nanoparticles added PNMA (PNMA-AgNPs) photocatalyst shows enhanced photocatalytic activity for Methylene Blue (MB) degradation (98.5%) achieved after only 30 min exposure of solar light time compared to PANI (32 %), and single PNMA (44 %) even after extended light irradiation times 90 min.

The enhanced photocatalytic activity of PNMA-AgNPs photocatalyst is ascribed to Surface Plasmon effect of silver nanoparticles which increases the charge separation efficiency by improvement in absorption property of the resulting structure which allows the decrease in the probability of charge recombination among produced electrons and holes during the photocatalytic process. The experimental results confirmed that PNMA-AgNPs composites have the potential application as photocatalyst for the degradation of dye molecules under solar light illumination.