Facile construction of S-scheme SnO2/g-C3N4 photocatalyst for improved photoactivity

The SnO2/g-C3N4 composites were fabricated via an annealing mixture of g-C3N4 and SnO2, which were obtained from calcinating melamine and hydrothermal treatment of SnCl4 solution, respectively. The photocatalytic properties of g-C3N4/SnO2 were studied over the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light, which exhibits a significantly improved photocatalytic activity compared to the single components, g-C3N4 and SnO2. The enhancement in photocatalytic activity of SnO2/g-C3N4 could be described by the S-scheme pathway, in which the effective charge transfer between components is demonstrated toward the suppression in recombination of the photogenerated electron-hole pairs within redox potential conservation. Besides, a new criterion, photochemical space-time yield, was applied to evaluate the photocatalytic performance of our samples.

Automated summary

The study successfully fabricated SnO2/g-C3N4 composites and investigated the mechanism behind the improved photocatalytic performance in degrading Rhodamine B. The effective charge transfer in the S-scheme pathway was shown to suppress recombination of electron-hole pairs, leading to enhanced photocatalytic activity.