Construction of Highly Condensed Cu2O/CuO Composites on Cu Sheet and Its Photocatalytic in Photodegradation of Hazardous Colouring Agent Rose Bengal

Binary copper oxides with different copper ion oxidation states including cuprous Cu2O and cupric CuO have already been successfully synthesized by the simple and highly repeatable grow-up technique from the modified copper Cu sheet. By controlling the annealing time and temperature, the copper oxide (CuO, Cu2O) composites were hierarchically formed on Cu surface. All obtained samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results showed that the modified Cu sheets after annealing in air yielded the mixture of CuO and Cu2O phases. The obtained Cu2O/CuO composites have been used as active photocatalysts to decolourize the 10 ppm dyes rose bengal solution with the degradation efficiency of 73% over a period of 3 h under UV-A irradiation after three uses. These results make them attractive as reusable photocatalytic materials in form of flat sheet. The other testing conditions as pH values and oxidant agent (H2O2) was carried out. It was observed that the photodegradation achieved up to 96% with the presence of H2O2.