Ag loading enhanced photocatalytic activity of g-C 3 N 4 porous nanosheets for decomposition of organic pollutants

Abstract

The g-C 3 N 4 porous nanosheets with different loading amount of Ag nanoparticles (NPs) are successfully prepared by a simple liquid-phase reduction method. These Ag/g-C 3 N 4 composites have an improved photocatalytic performance for decomposing organic pollutants compared with that of pure g-C 3 N 4 nanosheets. Many measurements have been used for characterizing the samples, such as XRD, FTIR, UV-Vis DRS, PL, XPS, EDS, SEM, and TEM. In Ag/g-C 3 N 4 , the Ag NPs are uniformly coated on the g-C 3 N 4 surface, the diameter is mainly in the range of 8~18 nanometers. Loading of Ag NPs expand the response to the visible light for g-C 3 N 4 and increasing the producing rate of photogenerated e - -h + pairs. The loading of silver NPs obviously enhances the photocatalytic activity of C 3 N 4 nanosheets toward the Rhodamine B (RhB) decomposition under the simulated sunlight irradiation. With different loading amounts of Ag NPs, Ag/g-C 3 N 4 (3 wt% of Ag) showed the highest photocatalytic activity for RhB decomposition among these as-prepared samples, which is 10 times of the rate of pure C 3 N 4 . Based on the experimental results, a possible photocatalytic mechanism for Ag/g-C 3 N 4 is proposed.