A well-defined S-g-C3N4/Cu-NiS heterojunction interface towards enhanced spatial charge separation with excellent photocatalytic ability: synergetic effect, kinetics, antibacterial activity, and mechanism insights

Haya A Abubshait; Shahid Iqbal; Samar A Abubshait; Mohammed T Alotaibi; Norah Alwadai; Nada Alfryyan; Hashem O Alsaab; Nasser S Awwad; Hala A Ibrahium

doi:10.1039/d1ra07974c

A well-defined S-g-C₃N₄/Cu-NiS heterojunction interface towards enhanced spatial charge separation with excellent photocatalytic ability: synergetic effect, kinetics, antibacterial activity, and mechanism insights

RSC Adv. 2022 Jan 25;12(6):3274-3286. doi: 10.1039/d1ra07974c. eCollection 2022 Jan 24.

Authors

Haya A Abubshait¹, Shahid Iqbal², Samar A Abubshait³, Mohammed T Alotaibi⁴, Norah Alwadai⁵, Nada Alfryyan⁵, Hashem O Alsaab⁶, Nasser S Awwad⁷, Hala A Ibrahium^{8

9}

Affiliations

¹ Basic Sciences Department, Deanship of Preparatory Year and Supporting Studies, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University P. O. Box 1982 Dammam 31441 Saudi Arabia.
² Department of Chemistry, School of Natural Sciences (SNS), National University of Science and Technology (NUST) H-12 Islamabad 46000 Pakistan shahidiqbal.chem@sns.nust.edu.pk.
³ Department of Chemistry, College of Science, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University P. O. Box 1982 Dammam 31441 Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Turabah University College, Taif University P. O. Box 11099 Taif 21944 Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Department of Physics, College of Sciences, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University P. O. Box 84428 Riyadh 11671 Saudi Arabia.
⁶ Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology, Taif University P. O. Box 11099 Taif 21944 Saudi Arabia.
⁷ Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, King Khalid University P. O. Box 9004 Abha 61413 Saudi Arabia.
⁸ Biology Department, Faculty of Science, King Khalid University P. O. Box 9004 Abha 61413 Saudi Arabia.
⁹ Department of Semi Pilot Plant, Nuclear Materials Authority P. O. Box 530 El Maadi Egypt.

Abstract

A well-defined heterojunction among two dissimilar semiconductors exhibited enhanced photocatalytic performance owing to its capability for boosting the photoinduced electron/hole pair transportation. Therefore, designing and developing such heterojunctions using diverse semiconductor-based materials to enhance the photocatalytic ability employing various approaches have gained research attention. For this objective, g-C₃N₄ is considered as a potential photocatalytic material for organic dye degradation; however, the rapid recombination rate of photoinduced charge carriers restricts the widespread applications of g-C₃N₄. Henceforth, in the current study, we constructed a heterojunction of S-g-C₃N₄/Cu-NiS (SCN/CNS) two-dimensional/one-dimensional (2D/1D) binary nanocomposites (NCs) by a self-assembly approach. XRD results confirm the construction of 22% SCN/7CNS binary NCs. TEM analysis demonstrates that binary NCs comprise Cu-NiS nanorods (NRs) integrated with nanosheets (NSs) such as the morphology of SCN. The observed bandgap value of SCN is 2.69 eV; nevertheless, the SCN/CNS binary NCs shift the bandgap to 2.63 eV. Photoluminescence spectral analysis displays that the electron-hole pair recombination rate in the SCN/CNS binary NCs is excellently reduced owing to the construction of the well-defined heterojunction. The photoelectrochemical observations illustrate that SCN/CNS binary NCs improve the photocurrent to ∼0.66 mA and efficiently suppress the electron-hole pairs when compared with that of undoped NiS, CNS and SCN. Therefore, the 22% SCN/7CNS binary NCs efficiently improved methylene blue (MB) degradation to 99% for 32 min under visible light irradiation.