Lyophilized tin-doped MoS2 as an efficient photocatalyst for overall degradation of Rhodamine B dye

Abstract

• Sn-doped MoS2 as photocatalyst for degradation of Rhodamine B dye. • Lyophilization process enhanced the surface area of the photocatalysts. • Better crystallinity, morphology and photocatalytic properties due to lyophilization. • The overall degradation of RhB dye just in 20 min using lyophilized Sn-MoS 2 photocatalyst. In this work, we have successfully synthesized pristine MoS 2 (P-MoS 2 ) and Sn-doped MoS 2 ( D -MoS 2 ) by hydrothermal method for photocatalytic degradation of dye. To enhance the catalytic activities, the samples are dried by the lyophilization process. The structural and morphological analysis were done by XRD, FE-SEM, HR-TEM, UV-Vis and XPS techniques. Dye degradation experiments were conducted for Rhodamine B (RhB) using the synthesized samples under visible light irradiation to compute their photocatalytic activity. We observed that the Lyophilized Sn-doped MoS 2 (DL-MoS 2 ) showed enhanced photocatalytic activity than the other synthesized samples. In particular, DL-MoS 2 showed a quick and overall degradation ability for RhB in just 20 min with good reusability behaviour and photostability. The excellent photocatalytic activity of DL-MoS 2 may be due to accelerated electron transfer upon Sn doping and fast generated electron-hole pair because of a higher surface area of 127 m 2 /g. Our study revealed that the DL-MoS 2 is a good photocatalyst for the complete degradation of RhB dye.