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Design and Development of g-C3N4/ZnO/CdS Ternary Photocatalyst for the Removal of Environmentally Hazardous Organic Dyes under Visible Light

Nagaraju Kottam, Koteswara Rao Jammula, Sagar J. Shivaram, Balaji Adavichambakuru Rajappa, Priyanka Narayanappa, Smrithi Sailaja Prasannakumaran Nair, Atthasit Tawai

Abstract


The processing of wastewater has emerged as a primary focus of research owing to the unavailability of clean water to satisfy the current population’s needs. In this work, a ternary nano-photocatalyst, g-C3N4/ZnO/CdS exhibiting visible light activity has been fabricated via a dual-step process that involved a pyrolytic transformation of urea to g-C3N4 subsequently followed by the solid state mechanochemical method to fabricate g-C3N4/ZnO/CdS. The synthesized nanomaterial underwent characterization using advanced techniques such as XRD, FTIR, FE-SEM/EDAX and UV-DRS techniques. The decomposition of Indigo Carmine dye was performed under the illumination of visible light, resulting in 99.6% degradation using a 50-mg photocatalytic dosage. Kinetic studies indicate that the photodegradation process followed pseudo-first-order where the phenomenon of adsorption adhered to the Langmuir–Hinshelwood model. This work attempted the generation of a multi pathway of electron migration by combining more than one Type-II heterojunction, which can effectively delay the electron-carrier recombination.

Keywords



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DOI: 10.14416/j.asep.2024.11.008

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