Synergistically effective and highly visible light responsive SnO2-g-C3N4 nanostructures for improved photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical performance

A. Mohammad,Mohammad Ehtisham Khan,Md. Rezaul Karim,M. Cho

Published 2019 in Applications of Surface Science

ABSTRACT

Abstract This paper reports the facile and scalable fabrication of mesoporous and high surface area tin oxide and tin oxide-graphitic carbon nitride nanostructures {SnO2, SnO2-C3N4 (2 mM) and SnO2-g-C3N4 (4 mM)} using a template-free hydrothermal approach. The overall characterisation revealed a high surface area (~181 m2g−1) with a mesoporous nature, relatively small particle size of SnO2 (~2–3 nm) grown successfully on g-C3N4 sheets, and significantly improved optical behaviour for visible light utilisation. Comparative screening of different SnO2-based nanostructures revealed significant improvements in visible-light induced photocatalytic degradation and photoelectrochemical performance. The visible light-induced degradation of model pollutants, such as Methylene blue (MB) and Congo red (CR), was achieved using SnO2-g-C3N4 (4 mM) with total efficiencies of ~99.38% and ~96%, respectively. The optimal SnO2-g-C3N4 (4 mM) as a photocatalyst showed first order rate constants for MB and CR degradation of 6.39 × 10−2 min−1 and 2.9 × 10−2 min−1, respectively. Moreover, the investigation of different modified photoelectrodes of SnO2-g-C3N4 (4 mM) and SnO2-g-C3N4 (2 mM) show more than eight and five times higher photoelectrochemical performance than that of SnO2, respectively. The possible synergistic effect makes the SnO2-g-C3N4 (4 mM) nanostructure an exceptional photocatalytic and photoresponsive material under visible light that can be used for future environmental and energy-related purposes.

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