Photodegradation of rhodamine-B in aqueous environment using visible-active gC3N4@CS-MoS2 nanocomposite

Rapid industrial expansion leads to environmental pollution especially in an aqueous environment. Photo-catalytic degradation is one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly techniques used to treat industrial pollution due to its complete degradation capability of a variety of water contaminants to their non-toxic state. Graphitic carbon nitride (gC3N4) and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) provide efficient dye degradation, but MoS2 has few disadvantages. Hence, chitosan (CS) supported gC3N4-MoS2 hybrid nanocomposite was developed in this study to reduce these issues by accelerating the degradation of dye molecules such as rhodamine-B under visible light. The prepared gC3N4@CS-MoS2 hybrid nanocomposite was thoroughly characterized using various analytical tools including FTIR, XRD, SEM, EDX, XPS, UV-Visible, and PL spectra. Several influencing parameters such as irradiation time, initial pH, dosage, and initial dye concentration were optimized by batch mode. The photodegradation of rhodamine-B could be induced by the heterogeneous gC3N4@CS-MoS2-water hybrid nanocomposite. The narrow band gap of gC3N4@CS-MoS2 (1.80 eV) makes it suitable for effective degradation of rhodamine-B due to more active in the visible region and attained its highest degradation efficiency of 99% after 40 min at pH 8 with minimum dosage of 60 mg. The possible degradation mechanism was tentatively proposed for rhodamine-B dye molecules from aqueous environment. The present work shows a novel photocatalyst for the purification and detoxification of dye molecules as well as other water contaminants found in polluted wastewater.