Polymer-capped gold nanoparticles and ZnO nanorods form binary photocatalyst on cotton fabrics: Catalytic breakdown of dye

Abstract

This work reports the immobilization of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures and gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) on cotton fabrics (CFs). The ZnO and AuNPs containing CF composite materials demonstrated excellent photocatalytic activity towards degradation of the model organic dye molecule. A two-step method was used to first create zinc oxide nanorods (ZnONRs) on the CF fibers. Subsequently, these ZnONRs were decorated with cationic polymer-capped AuNPs to yield the composite materials. A one-pot synthetic route was developed to synthesize polymer-capped AuNPs. The water-soluble cationic polymers used here are polyguanidino oxanorbornenes (PGONs) at 20 kDa and polyamino oxanorbornenes (PAONs) at 20 kDa. UV–vis was utilized to monitor the composite materials’ photocatalytic activity in degrading model organic dye molecules. All the materials were characterized by FTIR, UV–visible DRS, SEM, EDX, and XRD. The composite materials exhibited excellent photocatalytic activity and recyclability in the presence of UV light.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

cationic polymer / polymer-capped nanoparticles / ZnO nanorods / fabric / photocatalysis

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Disclosure of potential conflicts of interests

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, KSU; KSU CSM Mentor Protégé (BARUAH-01-FY2018-08) award, and Research Stimulus Program (RSP) fund in supporting the research. We also acknowledge Robert P. Apkarian Integrated Electron Microscopy Core of Emory University for its support with electron microscopy images. Special thanks to Dr. Gregory Gabriel for his generous gift of the water-soluble cationic polymers PGON and PAON. BB also acknowledges Dr. Mark Mitchell, Department Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, KSU, for his constant support.

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