Construction of cobalt-decorated Ag2WO4/g-C3N4 recombination-delayed nano-heterojunction for enhanced visible light photocatalytic activity

Abstract

The strong photo-induced charge separation /transfer plays an essential function in improving the photocatalysis efficiency of Ag₂WO₄ nanoparticles (AWO NPs). Herein, the novel Ag₂WO₄/Co/g-C₃N₄ (ACG) nanocomposite (NCs) was fabricated via the ultrasonic and facile co-precipitation approach for the assessment of photocatalytic activity. Physiological and photoelectrochemical techniques investigated the optical characteristics, phase structures, morphology, and charge separation of pristine and ACG NCs. The crystalline nature of the fabricated nanomaterials was verified by XRD and a selected area electron diffraction (SAED) pattern. According to the optical properties of ACG NCs, the particle has a band gap energy of 2.7 eV, which allows it to break down brilliant cresyl blue (BCB) in the existence of visible light (VL). The findings show that the photocatalytic degradation performance of ACG NCs for BCB (97.46%) was greater than that of individual g-C₃N₄ nanosheets (GCN NSs) (40.4%) and AWOs (58.78%). The produced photocatalyst exhibited an outstanding performance for the BCB dye degradation and the reaction mechanism obeyed the pseudo-first-order kinetics of the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model. Through a radical trapping experiment, it was determined that the ^•OH and ^•O₂ radicals were primarily accountable for the catalytic activity involved in the degradation of BCB. Six rounds of testing were used to examine the reusability of ACG NCs, and the reusable efficiency was 93.04%. The hazardous organic contaminants found in the environmental water bodies may be rapidly eliminated with the use of the produced NCs.