N-Doped Carbon-Coated ZnS with Sulfur-Vacancy Defect for Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity in the Visible Light Region

Hao Peng; Daixin Liu; Xiaogang Zheng; Xiaojin Fu

doi:10.3390/nano9121657

N-Doped Carbon-Coated ZnS with Sulfur-Vacancy Defect for Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity in the Visible Light Region

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2019 Nov 21;9(12):1657. doi: 10.3390/nano9121657.

Authors

Hao Peng¹, Daixin Liu², Xiaogang Zheng², Xiaojin Fu²

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yangtze Normal University, Chongqing 408100, China.
² College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Neijiang Normal University, Neijiang 641100, China.

Abstract

In this work, N-doped carbon-coated ZnS with a sulfur-vacancy defect (ZnS@N-C) was performed for the visible-light-driven photodegradation of tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH). The obtained ZnS@N-C exhibited enhanced photocatalytic activity compared with ZnS for TCH removal. Among these ZnS@N-C composites, ZnS@N-C-3 with N-doped content of 3.01% (100 nm) presented the best visible-light photocatalytic activity and superior long-term photocatalytic stability after five cycle times for TCH removal in the visible light region. This may be ascribed to the interface between the N-doped carbon shell and ZnS with a sulfur-vacancy defect for efficient charge transfer and the restrained recombination of charge carriers. Electron spin resonance (ESR) results indicate that the ·O₂^‒ radical plays a crucial role in the enhanced photocatalytic activity of ZnS@N-C-3.

Keywords: N-doped carbon; ZnS; sulfur-vacancy defect; visible-light harvesting.