Photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes and enhanced mechanical properties of PAN/CNTs composite nanofibers

Abstract This work describes the enhanced mechanical properties of the composite nanofibers and the photodegradation of two organic dyes using PAN/CNTs under UV irradiation at different volume concentration (0.05, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 wt.%). The composite nanofibers was performed with polyacrylonitrile (PAN), and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by electrospinning process. The composite nanofibers structure and morphology is characterized by XRD, FTIR, SEM, and TEM. The result indicates that with increasing CNTs content, the mechanical properties of the composite nanofibers was enhanced, and became more elastic, and the elastic modulus increased drastically. The results of mechanical properties exhibit improvements in tensile strengths, and elastic modulus by 38% and 84% respectively, at only 0.05 wt.% CNTs. Moreover, photocatalytic degradation performance in short time and low power intensity was achieved comparison to earlier reports.