Fabrication of Hexagonal Disc Shaped Nanoparticles g-C3N4/NiO Heterostructured Nanocomposites for Efficient Visible Light Photocatalytic Performance

A hexagonal shaped nickel oxide/graphitic carbon nitride (NiO/g-C3N4) heterojunction composite was synthesized via a facile microwave irradiation route joint with succeeding calcination process. The structural, morphological and optical properties of the catalysts were characterized by XRD, TEM, Raman, UV-DRS, PL and BET analysis. XRD and TEM results exposed that cubic structure and with two dimensional hexagonal discs shaped morphology with sizes in the range of 30-40nm. The incorporation of g-C3N4 caused a red-shift of the UV-Vis absorption edge of NiO. Moreover, exfoliation of bulk g-C3N4 into two dimensional g-C3N4 nanodiscs offers large surface area (102m(2)/g) and exposed active sites, which are beneficial for photocatalytic activity enhancement. The photocatalytic activity of the photocatalysts was analyzed by degradation of congo-red and malachite green (MG) under induced visible light irradiation. The results demonstrates that NiO/g-C3N4 with 1.2 mass ratios shows the optimal overall photocatalytic performance such as huge degradation efficiency (97%), high rate constant (0.02012min(-1)) and high stability (only loss3.5) after 7 cycles test (for MG dye). The superior photoactivity of NiO-g-C3N4 photocatalysts possibly will be recognized to the successful interfacial charge transfer between NiO and g-C3N4, thus suppressing the recombination of the photoexcited electron-hole pairs.