Growth of Ni loaded CdS in nanorods structure for photocatalytic and dye degradation applications under solar irradiation

Abstract

Due to the exponential increase in global energy consumption and the degradation of environmental conditions caused by fossil fuels, it is critical to improve inexhaustible and sustainable resources.Generally solar energy is one of the clean and environment agreeable energy sources. By harvesting solar energy for photocatalysis and considering it as a promising solution for various energy generation applications such as hydrogen production. Herein we are using Cadmium Sulphide and Nickel-doped Cadmium Sulphide in 0.5, 1 and 5 weight percent which act as photocatalyst for water splitting which will eventually produce an enormousamount of Hydrogen (H2). Cadmium sulphidewas prepared through the chemical precipitation method and Ni-CdS by hydrothermal technique. The purity and phase formation was examined by the X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and validated via Rietveld refinement by using Full Prof software. The surface morphology and the structure of as-synthesized material were evaluated by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) spectroscopic techniques. In accordance with results the Ni-CdS nanocomposite having 1.0 wt% of Ni exhibits the highest H2 evolution rate of 9 mmolg-1 in 5 hrs with strong photo-stability, which is about 50 times higher than that of CdS. The material was tested to degrade organic dye for its photocatalytic operations. The newly prepared composite materials (CdS-Ni-NiO) were used for the photocatalytic degradation of the methylene blue (MB) dye. Ni(1.0 wt%)-CdSshows an optimaldegradation percentage of 95.436 in the presence of artificial solar light in 90 minutes. Crystal growth mechanism shows the spherical structure of CdS agglomerate to form nanorods structure when doped with Ni metal which also verified by the TEM images of CdS and Ni doped CdS. The results pave the way for designing multi-component CdS-Ni nano-composites for highly efficient H2 evolution and other environmental applications.