Cu-Ag nanocomposites in-situ formed on the surface of CuZr-based metallic glasses as highly efficient catalysts for improving catalytic behavior and reusability towards wastewater treatment

Abstract Minor element addition will be considered to modulate the atomic structures of materials to achieve surface activation for enhancing catalytic capability. Herein, Ag minor alloying enhances the catalytic behaviors of Cu-Zr-Al MGs in degrading dye molecules due to in situ formed Cu-Ag nanocomposites as highly efficient and stable catalysts. The higher degradation efficiency and faster reaction rate for Cu46Zr44.5Al7.5Ag2 ribbons than those of Cu47.5Zr46Al6.5 ribbons are accurately achieved more than 99% efficiency and 0.32 min−1 reaction rate within 20 min after 30th run. The thermal activation energy barrier (ΔE) of 5.97 kJ mol−1 for Cu46Zr44.5Al7.5Ag2 ribbons is lower than that of 8.47 kJ mol−1 for Cu47.5Zr46Al6.5 ribbons. The enhanced capability can be attributed to the corrosion engineering and electrochemical principle, the inclusion of Ag as a cathode contributes to forming a micro-electric couple with Cu as an anode to generate a variety of active copper-based nanocomposites due to surface modification. More importantly, introducing Ag atom can promote the enrichment of Cu-Ag nanocomplexes on the surface of ribbons in order to provide stronger surface activity and faster electron transfer to further improve catalytic performance. These findings are expected to help open up new functional applications of CuZr-based MGs in environment field.