Fabrication, characterization and photocatalytic degradation activity of PS/PANI/CeO2 tri-layer nanostructured hybrids

Herein, we report the in-situ crystallization of CeO2 nanoparticles (NPs) onto the polyaniline (PANI)-modified polystyrene (PS) latexes via a two-step approach. The resulting polymer/CeO2 products were characterized in terms of X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, thermogravimetry, UV–Vis spectra, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The core/shell structured polymer/CeO2 composites were utilized as photocatalysts for the degradation of methylene blue dye molecules in aqueous solution. The photocatalytic activity of PS/PANI/CeO2 ternary hybrids under UV light irradiation was evaluated and compared with that of PS/CeO2 binary composites. By comparison with PS/CeO2, UV–Vis and PL spectra results revealed that the PS/PANI/CeO2 exhibited a narrowed bandgap, a broadened light response range and an improved separation efficiency of photogenerated electron–hole pairs, which contributed to enhancement of the photocatalytic activity. As expected, the tri-layer PS/PANI/CeO2 hybrids exhibited relative-high photodegradation efficiency compared to the PS/CeO2 ones and commercial CeO2 NPs, which might be attributed to the synergic effect between CeO2 and PANI. The provided data indicated that the developed tri-layer PS/PANI/CeO2 hybrids exhibited application potentials in photodegradation towards wastewater containing organic dyes.