Enhanced photocatalytic activity of plasmonic Au nanoparticles incorporated MoS nanosheets for degradation of organic dyes
arXiv:2006.16211
Abstract
In the present paper, we investigate the effect of plasmonic Au nanoparticles (NPs) decoration on the photocatalytic efficiency of MoS nanosheets. The Au NPs are grown on the surface of chemically exfoliated MoS nanosheets by chemical reduction method. Au-MoS nanostructures (NSs) are characterized by X-ray diffractometer, Raman spectrometer, absorption spectrophotometer, and transmission electron microscopy. Exfoliated MoS and Au-MoS NSs are used to study the photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes methyl red (MR) and methylene blue (MB). Under UV-Visible light irradiation, pristine MoS shows photo degradation efficiencies between 30% to 46.9% for MR and 23.3% to 44% for MB, with varying exposure times from 30 to 120 min, respectively. However, Au-MoS NSs with maximum Au NPs concentration show enhanced degradation efficiency from 70.2 to 96.7% for MR, and from 65.2 to 94.3% for MB. The manifold enhancement of degradation efficiency for both the dyes with Au-MoS NSs may be attributed to the presence of Au NPs acting as charge trapping sites in the NSs. We believe this study would have potential application in battling the ill-effects of environmental degradation, which poses a major threat to humans as well as biodiversity.
22 pages, 12 figures