Construction of AgIn5S8/gC3N4 composite and its enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production and degradation of organic pollutants under visible light irradiation

Abstract

Photocatalysis has received tremendous attention among researchers due to its practical usage of solar energy in the field of degradation of toxic pollutants and energy harvesting. In this work, we reported an AgIn5S8/gC3N4 composite as visible light active photocatalyst for hydrogen production and toxic pollutants degradation. Furthermore, the synthesized composites were properly investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV–visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV–vis DRS) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurement. The visible light photocatalytic performance was investigated through the degradation of a cationic dye Rhodamine B (RhB) dye from aqueous solution. The photocatalytic hydrogen production results show that AgIn5S8 loaded with 25% of g-C3N4 exhibited higher hydrogen production rate than pure AgIn5S8 and g-C3N4. All the obtained outputs showed that the combination of AgIn5S8 and gC3N4 could exhibit excellent visible light response and better charge separation behaviour, which leads to better photocatalytic performance in AgIn5S8/gC3N4 composite system. Furthermore, AgIn5S8/gC3N4 composite photocatalyst retains good stability in the performance of consecutive cycle usage. The plausible mechanism of the photocatalytic reactions was also studied and explained.