Hydrothermal Synthesis of Heterostructured g-C3N4/Ag–TiO2 Nanocomposites for Enhanced Photocatalytic Degradation of Organic Pollutants

Abstract

In this study, heterostructured g-C3N4/Ag–TiO2 nanocomposites were successfully fabricated using an easily accessible hydrothermal route. Various analytical tools were employed to investigate the surface morphology, crystal structure, specific surface area, and optical properties of as-synthesized samples. XRD and TEM characterization results provided evidence of the successful fabrication of the ternary g-C3N4/Ag–TiO2 heterostructured nanocomposite. The heterostructured g-C3N4/Ag–TiO2 nanocomposite exhibited the best degradation efficiency of 98.04% against rhodamine B (RhB) within 180 min under visible LED light irradiation. The g-C3N4/Ag–TiO2 nanocomposite exhibited an apparent reaction rate constant 13.16, 4.7, and 1.33 times higher than that of TiO2, Ag–TiO2, and g-C3N4, respectively. The g-C3N4/Ag–TiO2 ternary composite demonstrated higher photocatalytic activity than pristine TiO2 and binary Ag–TiO2 photocatalysts for the degradation of RhB under visible LED light irradiation. The improved photocatalytic performance of the g-C3N4/Ag–TiO2 nanocomposite can be attributed to the formation of an excellent heterostructure between TiO2 and g-C3N4 as well as the incorporation of Ag nanoparticles, which promoted efficient charge carrier separation and transfer and suppressed the rate of recombination. Therefore, this study presents the development of heterostructured g-C3N4/Ag–TiO2 nanocomposites that exhibit excellent photocatalytic performance for the efficient degradation of harmful organic pollutants in wastewater, making them promising candidates for environmental remediation.

Highly Efficient SnIn4S8@ZnO Z-Scheme Heterojunction Photocatalyst for Methylene Blue Photodegradation

“…Photocatalytic technology, as a new low-consumption, renewable and non-secondary solution to pollution problems, has received extensive attention from researchers [4][5][6][7][8]. Through the continuous efforts of researchers, photocatalytic materials have been greatly expanded, including oxides and sulfides such as ZnO, CdS, NiCo 2 O 4 and CuInS 2 [9][10][11][12], perovskite such as CsPbCl 3 [13], graphite-like phase g-C 3 N 4 [14], monoelemental red phosphorus [15], and so on. Among numerous photocatalytic materials, ZnO is a promising photocatalyst because it possesses many excellent characteristics, such as high electron mobility, low cost, nontoxicity and easy preparation [16,17].…”