Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) Plasma Assisted Synthesis of Ag2O Nanomaterials and Ag2O/RuO2 Nanocomposites

Figure S1a,b show the optical and field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) images of the RuO2 NMs. The nanomaterials exhibited nanosheet morphology with length >1 μm and the width <100 nm. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrum (Figure S1c) showed the prominent peaks at the diffraction angle (2θ) 28.00, 34.93, 39.64 and 54.00, representing (110), (101), (200) and (211) set of lattice planes of rutile type RuO2 (JCPDS card No.88-0322). The Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) thermogram of the RuO2 NMs (Figure S1d) showed the removal of oxygen in a gradual manner when increasing the temperature. Removal of the adsorbed water vapors until 120 °C, followed by gradual decomposition of RuOx into metallic Ru at higher temperature was noted. The samples initially contained 24.04 wt % (10.338 mg) oxygen and the oxygen loss amounted to 22.84 wt % (9.822 mg). Still it contained about 1.192 wt % oxygen at 800 °C.