Fabrication of g-C3N4@NiFe-LDH heterostructured nanocomposites for highly efficient photocatalytic removal of rhodamine B

This study reports that the novel binary g-C 3 N 4 @NiFe-LDH heterostructured photocatalysts were simply prepared by loading well-dispersed g-C 3 N 4 nanosheets on the surface of NiFe-LDH precursor via the hydrothermal synthesis process. The morphologic structure, chemical composition and optical properties of the as-prepared nanocomposites were clearly characterized by using XRD, SEM, FT-IR, UV–Vis DRS, XPS and N 2 adsorption–desorption techniques. In the photocatalytical degradation experiments, it can be seen that the optimal g-C 3 N 4 @NiFe-LDH nanocomposites can achieve the highest degradation efficiency (99%) for rhodamine B (RhB) within 240 min under visible light irradiation, and the corresponding pseudo-first-order rated constant is 0.912 h −1 . The improvement of photocatalytical performance can be attributed to the enhanced visible light absorption and fast separation of the photo-generated electron–hole pairs. Besides, the degradation efficiency can still remain more than 80% via four cycle processes, demonstrating its remarkable stability and reusability. More importantly, a possible Z-scheme photocatalytic mechanism was proposed according to the analysis of energy band structure and the radicals trapping experiments. This study will be beneficial for the design and research of Z-scheme g-C 3 N 4 -based heterojunction photocatalysts in the environmental remediation field.