Facile synthesis of ternary g-C3N4/polyacrylic acid/CoFe2O4 nanocomposites for solar light irradiated photocatalytic and supercapacitor applications

Abstract

The present work reports an enhanced photocatalytic and electrochemical performance of g-C3N4 assisted PAA on CoFe2O4 (g-C3N4/PAA/CoFe2O4) ternary nanocomposites (NCs). XRD analysis confirms the formation of a single-phase cubic spinel structure of CoFe2O4. The recombination of photogenerated charge carriers is greatly inhibited by the incorporation of PAA and g-C3N4 on CoFe2O4 and thus improves their separation efficiency. The size and size distribution of the pristine CF NPs is considerably influenced by the incorporation of PAA and g-C3N4 which was confirmed by SEM and TEM analysis, respectively. The ternary NCs (g-C3N4/PAA/CoFe2O4) exhibit superior photocatalytic degradation (91%) against crystal violet dye under direct solar light irradiation when compared with binary PAA/CoFe2O4 (79%) NCs and pristine CoFe2O4 (32%) NPs. GCD measurement shows that g-C3N4/PAA/CoFe2O4 NCs exhibits a high specific capacitance value (1470 F/g) than that of PAA/CoFe2O4 NCs (572 F/g) and CoFe2O4 (214 F/g) NPs at a current density of 1 A/g which is due to the synergistic effect of g-C3N4 assisted PAA on CoFe2O4. Hence, it can be concluded that the resulting g-C3N4/PAA/CoFe2O4 NCs will deliver an excellent catalytic and electrochemical performance and hence we believe that our findings provide a new platform for efficient photocatalytic and supercapacitor applications.