Capacitive deionization with MoS2/g-C3N4 electrodes

The issue of insufficient freshwater resources has become a worldwide problem, restricting social and economic development. As a promising technology, capacitive deionization (CDI) has been developed to address this problem. In this work, MoS2/g-C3N4 composite with a high supercapacitor performance was successfully synthesized and assembled as the CDI electrode material with its electrochemical properties deeply evaluated. The results demonstrated that the MoS2/g-C3N4-based electrode demonstrated a large specific capacitance of 118.3 F/g (at 1 A/g) and a remarkable rate capacitance retention of 52.16% (61.7 F/g) (at 10 A/g). Moreover, the MoS2/g-C3N4-based electrode exhibited obvious improvement in desalination performance with the maximum electrosorption capacity of 24.5 mg/g. The hierarchical architecture, enhanced conductivity, large surface area, and negative zeta potential of MoS2/g-C3N4 composite facilitated the fast diffusion of ions. The enhanced ions adsorption performance of the MoS2/g-C3N4-based electrode was evaluated based on a capacitive contribution of 85.26% and a diffusion-controlled contribution of 14.74%.