Photocatalytic activity of TiO2-ZnO/g-C3N4 nanocomposites for methylene orange and Rhodamine B dyes removal from water and photocatalytic hydrogen generation

Abstract

In this work, for the removal of azo dyes that cause environmental pollution, TiO2-ZnO has been modified with graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) to form an advanced hetero-linked photocatalyst. With this catalyst, photocatalytic hydrogen production and photodegradation activity against methylene orange (MO) and rhodamineB (RhB) dye removal were studied. The synthesized nanostructure was extensively characterized by several techniques such as XRD, TEM, UV–Vis and fluorescence spectrophotometer (PL) techniques. According to the analysis, a significant increase in the photocatalytic efficiency of TiO2-ZnO was determined after it was modified with g-C3N4 nanostructures. The combination between TiO2-ZnO and g-C3N4 was shown to be responsible for the improvement in photocatalytic activity because it significantly decreased electron-hole recombination. After 90 min the 62.81% of MO dye was removed but at 120 min only 57% of RhB was degraded. In addition, the antibacterial activity of TiO2-ZnO/g-C3N4 catalyst was carried out against gram positive and gram negatif bacteria. The bacterial inhibition (%) of TiO2-ZnO/g-C3N4 catalyst.was found to be 44 % against E. coli and 33 % against at 100 μg/ml concentration. In line with the analyzes obtained with this study, important results have been revealed for the application of photocatalytic methods in more industrial dimensions in the production of hydrogen, which is a valuable energy type.