Enhanced solar-driven photocatalytic and photovoltaic performance of polymer composite containing carbon black and calcium titanate nanoparticles

In this work, pristine calcium titanate (CaTiO 3 ), polyaniline (PANI), binary PANI@carbon black (CB), and ternary PANI@CB/CaTiO 3 composites were synthesized using solid-state and in situ oxidative polymerization method. XRD, FTIR, UV–Vis, PL, FE-SEM, and EDX analyses were studied in order to examine the structural, optical, and morphological properties of all grown samples. XRD, FTIR, FESEM, and EDX findings confirmed the formation of successful chemical organization among PANI, CaTiO 3 , and CB. The UV–Vis and PL investigation reaffirmed the reduction in optical band gap (2.67 eV–2.56 eV) and charge carrier recombination process due to inclusion of CaTiO 3 into CB-reinforced polymer matrix. In photocatalytic experiment, PANI@CB/10%CaTiO 3 catalyst showed efficacious performance to degrade the synthetic dyes (99.7% MO and 97.8% MB) after 120-min sunlight irradiation with higher rate and superb stability up-to 5th cycle against MO dye. In kinetic examination, pseudo-first-order kinetic model was obeyed by both dyes. Herein, the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) photovoltaic cell was fabricated by spin-coating the grown samples on FTO glass substrate and thermally evaporating the Al electrode subsequently. The BHJ fabricated by PANI@CB/10%CaTiO 3 showed better efficiency (0.541%), photocurrent density ( J sc ) (4.21 mA/cm 2 ), and open-circuit voltage ( V oc ) (0.39 V). Graphical abstract