Synthesis of g-C <sub>3</sub> N <sub>4</sub> nanorods for visible-light photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue, methylene orange and rhodamine-B
Ghulam Nabi, Nafisa Malik, Muhammad Bilal Tahir, Muhammad Tanveer, Rizwan Rafique, Salsbeel Rehman, Raheel Yousaf, Sadia Akram
Abstract
A novel recoverable photocatalyst g-C3N4 nanorods have been synthesised by using melamine and adopting the hydrothermal method. Graphitic carbon nitride has been characterised by a wide range of characterisation techniques like XRD, SEM, EDX, PL and FTIR. Their effect on degradation of organic dyes, methylene blue (MB), methylene orange (MO) and Rhodamine-B (Rh-B) have been studied along with factors of pH 0–5 and pH 8–14. Remarkably, g-C3N4 could degrade 99% of MO, 97% of MB and 99.9% of Rh-B with pH 0–5, and 97.7% of MO, 98% of MB and 99.5% Rh-B with pH 8–12, respectively. This catalyst has superior dye degradation efficiency (99.9% and 99.5%) for Rh-B for both the factors pH 0–5 and pH 8–12. The trapping experiment results portrayed that the superoxide radical anion (•O2−) and holes (h+) have played major role for the degradation of Rh-B, MB and MO dyes. Based on the trapping experiment results, a tentative photocatalytic mechanism has also been proposed.