One-step preparation of well-dispersed spindle-like Fe2O3 nanoparticles on g-C3N4 as highly efficient photocatalysts
ShuYao Xiong, Xinhui Liu, Xianjian Zhu, Gang Liang, Zhuojun Jiang, Baoshan Cui, Junhong Bai
Abstract
Photocatalysis has attracted wide attention due to its outstanding advantages in dealing with sewage. And compounds of metal oxides and g-C3N4 that possess Z-type heterojunctions have become the star photocatalysts in degrading pollutants. In this paper, a novel one-step method for the preparation of highly efficient photocatalyst of Fe2O3/g-C3N4, using Fe (NO3)3 and urea as raw materials, is described. Under the optimized condition, the one-step synthesized photocatalyst of FeGCN-0.10 showed higher photocatalytic performance compared with the multi-step prepared photocatalyst, and the rate of removing basic fuchsin was 92% (210 min), which was 19.5% higher than that of the latter. Furthermore, different methods were also applied for characterizing Fe2O3/g-C3N4. Structural characterization results confirmed the composites of Fe2O3/g-C3N4. Morphological characterization results showed that spindle-like Fe2O3 particles were distributed more evenly on the layered g-C3N4 compared with the impregnation method. Optical characterization results demonstrated the high intensity of the separated photo-generated electron-hole pairs and of Fe2O3/g-C3N4, which uncovered the removing mechanism of basic fuchsin.