Abstract
This study demonstrated facile synthesis of silver phosphate (Ag&sub3;PO&sub4;) photocatalysts for the degradation of organic contaminants. Ag&sub3;PO&sub4; microparticles from different concentrations of precursor, AgNO&sub3;, were produced and characterized by scanning electron microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, and UV⁻visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. Degradation rates of methylene blue (MB) and phenol were measured in the presence of microparticles under low-power white-light light-emitting-diode (LED) irradiation and the reaction rate followed pseudo-first-order kinetics. The prepared Ag&sub3;PO&sub4; microparticles displayed considerably high photocatalytic activity (>99.8% degradation within 10 min). This can be attributed to the microparticles' large surface area, the low recombination rate of electron⁻hole pairs and the higher charge separation efficiency. The practicality of the Ag&sub3;PO&sub4; microparticles was validated by the degradation of MB, methyl red, acid blue 1 and rhodamine B under sunlight in environmental water samples, demonstrating the benefit of the high photocatalytic activity from Ag&sub3;PO&sub4; microparticles.