Synergistic cobalt–nickel co-catalyst for enhanced visible light-induced photocatalytic water oxidation

Abstract

The loading of co-catalyst is an efficient way to increase the activity of synthesized carbon-based photocatalysts in the energy and environmental applications. Herein, Co and Ni decorated on g-C3N4 was synthesized as a visible light active photocatalyst and characterized with XRD, FT-IR, BET, DRS, TGA, FE-SEM, EDX, and EIS techniques. From the characterization results, it was demonstrated that cobalt and nickel which were present in the structure of the nanocatalyst, were in the metallic form. The decoration of Ni and Co reduced bandgap energy of g-C3N4 and made the synthesized nanocomposite active under visible light. The operating condition of O2 photocatalytic generation was optimized (193.75 μmol L−1 O2 productions using 0.2 g Co2Ni1/g-C3N4/rGO at 7 h without sacrificial reagents). The effect of sacrificial reagents (Fe(NO3)3, AgNO3, and methanol) was investigated and Fe(NO3)3 showed the best results during water oxidation. The kinetics study indicates that the presence of cocatalysts could be helpful in reducing the apparent activation energy about 3.5 times. The photocatalyst represented acceptable stability (2% Ni and 3% Co leaching) and reusability up to six cycles. According to the obtained results, we can introduce Co2Ni1/g-C3N4/rGO as a potential powerful photocatalyst for water oxidation reaction under visible light. Co and Ni are decorated on g-C3N4/rGO to synthesize a novel photocatalyst with a synergistic effect for photocatalytic water oxidation under visible light. The photocatalyst shows high stability and reusability after six cycles.