Effective degradation of MB under natural daylight using green synthesized Cu-Cu2O composite films

Abstract

In this work, we report a green, nontoxic, no-residue method for degradation of methylene blue (MB) using Cu-Cu2O films prepared with spinach leaves extract. The photocatalytic activity for two composite films with different copper concentrations, specifically 0.01 M and 0.05 M, was investigated under natural outdoor light which has an average irradiation of 3 mW/cm2. An overall degradation of 97.7% was achieved using the 0.05 M Cu-Cu2O composite, over a time duration of 180 min. We believe that the native oxidizing property of spinach extract played a major role in enhancing the photocatalytic activities of our films and gave them equitable reaction kinetics under natural daylight.