The increase in environmental pollution has led to an increased investigation in the development of novel ternary photocatalytic systems for remediation. These photocatalytic systems exhibit superior photocatalytic action for the removal of pollutants because of their visible light active bandgaps. A highly effective visible light active ternary heterojunction was fabricated using a hydrothermal method assisted by ultrasonication. Herein, we report the in situ hydrothermal synthesis of Mn-doped Bi2WO6-GO/ MoS2 photocatalyst, efficiently exhibiting greater photocatalytic activity for the wastewater treatment under solar light. The binary metal sulphide (MoS2) used as a co-catalyst, acted as an electron collector and graphene oxide (GO) as a support material for interfacial electron transfer to and from bismuth tungstate and MoS2. The as-prepared samples were characterized using SEM-EDX, FT-IR, XRD, XPS, BET, PL, and UV-Vis techniques. The bandgap of the novel photocatalyst was found in the visible region (2.2 eV) which helped in suppressing photoinduced electron-hole pairs recombination. The ternary Mn-doped Bi2WO6-GO/MoS2 showed 99% methylene blue removal after 60 minutes of sunlight irradiation at the optimum conditions of pH 8, catalyst dose 50 mg/100ml, and initial MB concentration of 10ppm under sunlight irradiation. The doped ternary heterostructure has proved to be an effective sunlight-active photocatalyst that can be reused without substantial loss in photocatalytic efficiency.
Keywords: Graphene oxide; Heterogeneous photocatalysis;; Mn doping;; Nanocomposites;; Semiconductor metal oxides;; Wastewater treatment;.
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.