Rational construction of 1D/2D Cu-NiS/S-g-C3N4 binary nanocomposites heterojunction enriching spatial charge carrier separation under visible light irradiation

Abstract

Due to their potential to accelerate photoinduced electron/hole pair transportation, a well-defined heterojunction between the two different semiconductors was shown to improve photocatalytic performance. As a result, research has focused on building and improving heterojunctions utilizing a variety of semiconductor-based materials to improve photocatalytic activity using a variety of ways. For this purpose, g-C3N4 (CN) is being studied as a possible photocatalytic material for the removal of organic dyes, although its high recombination rate of photogenerated charge carriers limits its use. In the current work, we used a self-assembly method to create heterojunction of 5CuNS-18-SCN binary nanocomposites (NCs). The 5CuNS-18-SCN binary NCs were confirmed by XRD data. TEM examination reveals that the binary NCs are made up of Cu–NiS (CuNS) nanorods (NRs) and nanosheets (NSs), like the morphology of S-g-C3N4 (SCN). Even though the bandgap of SCN is 2.70 eV, the 5CuNS-18-SCN binary NCs shift the bandgap to 2.64 eV. Because of the well-defined heterojunction, the electron-hole pair recombination rate in the 5CuNS-18-SCN binary NCs is greatly decreased, as shown by photoluminescence spectrum analysis. The photoelectrochemical results show that 5CuNS-18-SCN binary NCs increases the photocurrent to 0.65 mA and effectively suppress the electron-hole pairs that were previously associated with bare NiS, CuNS, and SCN. Under visible light irradiation, the 5CuNS-18-SCN binary NCs effectively increased methylene blue (MB) decolorization to 100% for 36 min.