Facile functionalization of cotton with nanostructured silver/titania for visible-light plasmonic photocatalysis.

In the present work, a simple, reliable and cost-effective approach to functionalize cotton fabrics with Ag-TiO2 nanoparticles strongly bound to the fibres and with visible-light-responsive photo-activity is presented. The hybrid cotton-Ag-TiO2 fabrics were characterized by Raman, AFM, FE-SEM, TGA, XPS GSDR, and LIL to confirm the generation of metallic Ag nanoparticles and crystalline TiO2 and investigate how the concentration of Ag and TiO2 precursors affected the morphology and the luminescence properties of the nanostructured layer grafted on the cotton fibres. The photocatalytic activity of the cotton-Ag-TiO2 hybrid systems was evaluated by the discoloration of Remazol Brilliant Blue R in water under a xenon lamp irradiation (sunlight simulator) equipped with selective filters. The extended photocatalytic activity to the visible is here explained by a synergistic effect of both the excitation of the Ag NPs plasmon resonance by visible light and a delayed electron-hole recombination rate caused by Ag NPs, as it can be observed by UV absorption.