A Facile Synthesis of WS2/g-C3N4 Composites with Improved Photocatalytic Activity

Abstract

Visible-light-driven photocatalysis has received considerable attention in the environmental treatment in recent years. In this paper, WS2/g-C3N4 composite photocatalysts with various contents of WS2 and g-C3N4 were synthesized by a facile method via heating the mixtures of tungstic acid and thiourea, and denoted as nWCN, where n is weight ratio of thiourea to tungstic acid. The composites were characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS, TEM, IR, Raman spectroscopy, XPS, TGA, and UV-vis DRS. The characterizations reveal that the composites contain WS2 nanosheets coated by g-C3N4 and the relative content of WS2 in the composites decreases with increasing amount of thiourea in the reaction mixtures. All the composites exhibited the better photocatalytic activity in degradation of methylene blue in aqueous solution than the single components, WS2, and g-C3N4. Among them, 7WCN sample performed the highest activity. A synergistic effect between WS2 and g-C3N4 in photocatalytic activity for the composites was observed.