Silver Doped Graphitic Carbon Nitride for the Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity Towards Organic Dyes

Recently, graphitic carbon nitride has been investigated as a promising photocatalyst for organic dye degradation application. In this study, a facile strategy to synthesise silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) doped graphitic carbon nitride (GCN-Ag) has been reported. The characterisation study of the asprepared samples was performed using various analytical techniques. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) revealed that the structure of pure graphitic carbon nitride (GCN-Pure) partly changed on the addition of the AgNPs. The diffused reflectance spectra (DRS) unveiled a significant red shift in the absorption edge of GCN-Ag. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis revealed that the morphological aspects of GCN-Pure changed on the addition of AgNPs. Further the as-prepared samples have been compared for their degradation activity towards organic dye pollutants including methylene blue, crystal violet and rose bengal. The phenomenon of the better separation of photogenerated charge carriers was attributed to the better photoactivity in the case of GCN-Ag than GCN-Pure. In addition to it the reusability experiment of GCN-Ag revealed that the catalyst remained highly stable after the three cyclic runs of photodegradation experiment.