Ag Loading Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity of g-C3N4 Porous Nanosheets for Decomposition of Organic Pollutants

• Main Authors: Kezhen Qi, Yi Li, Yubo Xie, Shu-yuan Liu, Kun Zheng, Zhe Chen, Ruidan Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-04-01
• Series: Frontiers in Chemistry
• Subjects: Ag nanoparticles; Ag/g-C3N4; photocatalytic activity; organic pollutant; electron-hole separation; modification
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fchem.2019.00091/full

The g-C3N4 porous nanosheets with different loading amount of Ag nanoparticles (NPs) are successfully prepared by a simple liquid-phase reduction method. These Ag/g-C3N4 composites have an improved photocatalytic performance for decomposing organic pollutants compared with that of pure g-C3N4 nanosheets. Many measurements have been used for characterizing the samples, such as XRD, FTIR, UV-Vis DRS, PL, XPS, EDS, SEM, and TEM. In Ag/g-C3N4, the Ag NPs are uniformly coated on the g-C3N4 surface, the diameter is mainly in the range of 8~18 nanometers. Loading of Ag NPs expand the response to the visible light for g-C3N4 and increasing the producing rate of photogenerated e−-h+ pairs. The loading of silver NPs obviously enhances the photocatalytic activity of C3N4 nanosheets toward the Rhodamine B (RhB) decomposition under the simulated sunlight irradiation. With different loading amounts of Ag NPs, Ag/g-C3N4 (3 wt% of Ag) showed the highest photocatalytic activity for RhB decomposition among these as-prepared samples, which is 10 times of the rate of pure C3N4. Based on the experimental results, a possible photocatalytic mechanism for Ag/g-C3N4 is proposed.