Amorphous carbon-coated tungsten trioxide can be applied for dye degradation as a photocatalyst. It has been reported that amorphous carbon-coated tungsten oxide with oxygen vacancies (WO3?x/C) may be prepared via pyrolysis of hybrid-polyoxometalates (hybrid-POMs) in nitrogen atmosphere.
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In this report, the researchers have characterized the as-prepared product by using TGA, XRD, Raman, FTIR, SEM, TEM, EDS, XPS and BET. The results showed that the compositions, microstructures and concentrations of oxygen vacancies were closely related with the species of organic amines in the hybrid-POMs. When the WO3?x/C composites were used as catalysts for degradation of dyes such as methylene blue, methyl orange and Rhodamine B under visible light irradiation, they showed much enhanced photocatalytic abilities compared to that of WO3 and P25, which could be ascribed to the coating of WO3 by amorphous carbon and the construction of defects (oxygen vacancy) in WO3. This synthesis method is simple and shows a great potential in fabricating efficient transition metal-based composites for photocatalysis applications.
