Facile Fabrication of g-C3N4/Fe3O4 Photocatalyst with Enhanced Visible-Light Photocatalytic Activity towards the Degradation of Tartrazine Dye

Abstract

The removal of tartrazine dye from aqueous solution using g-C3N4/Fe3O4 nanocomposites was studied. The g-C3N4/Fe3O4 nanocomposites were synthesized using simple co-precipitation method. The synthesized nanocomposites were characterized by spectral (UV-Vis DRS, FT-IR) and analytical (PXRD, SEM, EDAX, HRTEM) techniques. Photodegradation of tartrazine dye using the synthesized catalyst was studied. The g-C3N4/Fe3O4 nanocomposites exhibited excellent photocatalytic performance by degrading tartrazine (90%) at 0.1 g/L of catalyst and 20 μM initial dye concentration at pH 3. The excellent performance by the catalyst was attributed to the highest electron hole pair generation. The kinetic study revealed that the photodegradation of tartrazine obeyed pseudo first-order kinetics.