Evaluation of photocatalytic performance for novel Cr2S3–SiO2 nano-catalyst: optimization, quenching, antimicrobial studies

Abstract

In this study, The Cr2S3 which incorporated SiO2 was synthesized by ultrasonic sol-gel method. In this sense, the mutagenic dyes were removed by the Cr2S3–SiO2 nanocomposites under UV light. The structure of the prepared catalyst was evaluated by x-ray diffraction and photoelectron spectroscopy. The morphology of the nanomaterial was studied by scanning electron microscopy-EDS and dynamic light scattering. In order to evaluate the band gap energy, the Cr2S3–SiO2 nanocomposites were analyzed by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). The crystallite size and band-gap values of Cr2S3-SiO2-1 were 37.11 nm, and 2.9 eV, respectively. The activity of Cr2S3–SiO2 nanocomposites demonstrated the exceptional performance in the Disperse Blue 291 and Dispersed Violet 93 dyes degradation after 50 min at pH: 10 under UV light illumination. The result demonstrates that the quencher does not have an influence on photo-degradation of the Disperse Blue 291 and Dispersed Violet 93 dyes. The antimicrobial data of Cr2S3–SiO2 were studied and the results show that the Cr2S3–SiO2 has fungicidal and bactericidal attributes.