Abstract:
Silver sulphide (Ag2S) and zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles were synthesized through a sol-gel method. The Ag
constituent of the ternary was achieved by photodesposition of the binary Ag2S/ZnO resulting in a color
change from brownish grey to purple indicating its formation. The synthesised particles were characterised
using Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Energy-dispersive
X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) to confirm its elemental presence and morphology. The crystallinity of the
nanoparticles was determined using the X-ray diffractometer (XRD), and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET)
analysis surface area was 4.95 m2
g-1. The progressive degradation of phenol was analysed and results
showed that under visible light, the ternary composite Ag/Ag2S/ZnO, exhibited the highest phenol degradation
efficiency (95 %) compared to the constituent compounds, ZnO (37 %) and Ag2S/ZnO (83 %) after 6 h of
visible light irradiation respectively. However, investigations have revealed that extrinsic factors such as pH
of the solution, the initial concentration of phenol and photocatalyst dosage could significantly affect the overall
system performance.
