Designing a novel visible-light-driven heterostructure Ni-ZnO/S-g-C3N4 photocatalyst for coloured pollutant degradation

Ali Bahadur; Shahid Iqbal; Hashem O Alsaab; Nasser S Awwad; Hala A Ibrahium

doi:10.1039/d0ra09390d

Designing a novel visible-light-driven heterostructure Ni-ZnO/S-g-C₃N₄ photocatalyst for coloured pollutant degradation

RSC Adv. 2021 Nov 12;11(58):36518-36527. doi: 10.1039/d0ra09390d. eCollection 2021 Nov 10.

Authors

Ali Bahadur¹, Shahid Iqbal², Hashem O Alsaab³, Nasser S Awwad⁴, Hala A Ibrahium^{4

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Affiliations

¹ Department of Transdisciplinary Studies, Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University Seoul 08826 South Korea.
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 Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology, Taif University P. O. Box 11099 Taif 21944 Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Research Center for Advanced Materials Science (RCAMS), King Khalid University P. O. Box 9004 Abha 61413 Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Department of Semi Pilot Plant, Nuclear Materials Authority P. O. Box 530, El Maadi Egypt.

Abstract

In this study, photocorrosion of ZnO is inhibited by doping Ni in the ZnO nanostructure and electron-hole recombination was solved by forming a heterostructure with S-g-C₃N₄. Ni is doped into ZnO NPs from 0 to 10% (w/w). Among the Ni-decorated ZnO NPs, 4% Ni-doped ZnO NPs (4NZO) showed the best performance. So, 4% Ni-ZnO was used to form heterostructure NCs with S-g-C₃N₄. NZO NPs were formed by the wet co-precipitation route by varying the weight percentage of Ni (0-10% w/w). Methylene blue (MB) was used as a model dye for photocatalytic studies. For the preparation of the 4NZO-x-SCN nanocomposite, 4NZO NPs were formed in situ in the presence of various concentrations of S-g-C₃N₄ (10-50% (w/w)) by using the coprecipitation route. The electron spin resonance (ESR) and radical scavenger studies showed that O₂ ^- and OH free radicals were the main reactive species that were responsible for MB photodegradation.