Heterojunctioned CuO/Cu2O catalyst for highly efficient ozone removal

In recent years, near surface ozone pollution, has attracted more and more attention, which necessitates the development of high efficient and low cost catalysts. In this work, CuO/Cu₂O heterojunctioned catalyst is fabricated by heating Cu₂O at high temperature, and is adopted as ozone decomposition catalyst. The results show that after Cu₂O is heated at 180°C conversion of ozone increases from 75.2% to 89.3% at mass space velocity 1,920,000 cm³/(g·hr) in dry air with 1000 ppmV ozone, which indicates that this heterojunction catalyst is one of the most efficient catalysts reported at present. Catalysts are characterized by electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy, which confirmed that the heterojunction promotes the electron transfer in the catalytic process and creates more defects and oxygen vacancies in the CuO/Cu₂O interfaces. This procedure of manufacturing heterostructures would also be applicable to other metal oxide catalysts, and it is expected to be more widely applied to the synthesis of high-efficiency heterostructured catalysts in the future.