Facile One-Pot Synthesis and Enhanced Photocatalytic Performances of Ternary Metal Sulfide Composite g-C3N4/Cu3SnS4

g-C3N4/Cu3SnS4 (CN/CTS) nanocomposite photocatalysts were synthesized by solvothermal in-situ reaction. SEM analyses show that petal-like nanoparticles of Cu3SnS4 cover the nanosheets of g-C3N4 in the CN/CTS composites. As the doping amount of CTS increases from 5 % to 20 %, the band gaps of the CN/CTS composites decrease from 2.66 eV to 2.46 eV. All CN/CTS composites display higher photocurrent densities than pristine g-C3N4 and CTS, indicating high charge transfer capacity and low recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes for the CN/CTS composites under light irradiation. Photocatalytic experiments on the photodegradation of methylene blue (MB) showed that 59.3 %-82.7 % of MB were degraded in 3.5 h over the CN/CTS composites, which were higher than those of pristine g-C3N4 and CTS due to the enhanced photocurrent densities of the CN/CTS composites. The catalytic performance of CN/CTS composites was affected by the doping amount of CTS. The CN/10 %-CTS composite exhibited the best catalytic efficiencies with the MB degradation of 82.7 %, which is consistent with the result that it has the highest photocurrent density of 0.84 mu A/cm(2).