Journal of Material Sciences & Engineering

Preparation of a Photoactive 3D Polymer Pillared with Metalloporphyrin

Abstract

Zargari S, Rahimi R and Rahimi A

Among the very few efforts for the preparation of stable pillared graphene nanostructures, there is no report of tin porphyrin intercalated between TiO2-graphene (TG) nanosheets. In this study, a nanostructure material of pillared graphene made of tin porphyrin functionalized graphene-TiO2 composite (TG) was successfully synthesized. The prepared compound showed high activity in the photodegradation reaction under irradiation of visible light. Photocatalytic results showed that the composite of graphene-TiO2 containing 3% graphene had the highest photoactivity. The photoactivity of TG (3%) was about 1.5 times higher than that of the pure TiO2. Besides, tin porphyrin-pillared TG composite (TGSP) material exhibited an excellent visible light photocatalytic performance in degradation of methyl orange dye. This compound could destruct 100% of methyl orange dye in 180 min. Such pillared carbon nanostructure exhibited unique photoactivity due to the synergistic effect between the graphene sheets and the SnTCPP pillars. It is found that the highly efficient light-harvesting structure of the SnTCPP pillared TG composite can be attributed to densely embedded porphyrin chromophores with high visible absorptivity within the framework. The investigation of photocatalytic mechanism determined that hydroxyl radical is a main species in photodegradation process of methyl orange over TGSP compound.