LAUSR

Abstract Designing high-performance noble-metal-free photocatalysts is the key for photocatalytic technology to expand its further application in energy and environment fields. Herein, chloroacetic acid (CA) modified SnO2 quantum dots (QDs) with enhanced photocatalytic activity were prepared under hydrothermal conditions. Through XRD, TEM, FT-IR XPS, Raman and TG analysis, it was found that CA molecules were successfully linked to the surface of SnO2 QDs and formed stable SnO2@CA QDs. The SnO2@CA QDs show excellent photocatalytic activities for methyl orange, methylene blue and phenol. The photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange follows the first order reaction. From the apparent rate constant, it can be seen that the photocatalytic performances of SnO2 QDs were significantly improved by the modification of CA, while decreased with the increase of hydrothermal reaction time. Finally, the preliminary hypothesis of SnO2@CA QDs for degradation of organic pollutants has been proposed. The findings reported here could benefit the designing of highly efficient photocatalyst.