Visible-Light Photocatalytic Degradation of Organic Pollutants Using Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2) Microtubes

Abstract

Herein, we report a facile hydrothermal synthesis, characterization and visible light driven photocatalytic degradation of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) microtubes decorated with curly nanosheets. The synthesized microtubes were characterized by several techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-vis DRS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The detailed characterizations confirmed that the synthesized microtubes possess well-crystallinity with rhombohedral crystal structure and band gap energy of 1.35 eV. Visible-light photocatalytic degradation of synthesized microtubes was investigated for three persistent organic pollutants, i.e., methylene blue (MB), indigo carmine (IC) and ofloxacin (OFL) antibiotic drug. The detailed photocatalytic studies confirmed that the synthesized microtubes exhibited excellent photocatalytic performance towards the degradation of MB (92.4% in 45 min), IC (73.6% in 80 min) and OFL (59.3% in 90 min) under visible light irradiation. Further, the kinetic studies revealed that the photocatalytic decomposition of MB, IC and OFL were well fitted with the pseudo-first order kinetic model. The presented work demonstrate that simply prepared MoS2 nanomaterials can be used as excellent visible light driven photocatalysts for the photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants.