Visible-light-driven Z-scheme Tg-C3N4/Co/Ag3VO4 heterojunction with promoted photocatalytic performances

The Z-scheme heterojunction photocatalyst materials play an effective role in eliminating organic contaminants as exposed to visible light (VL). Furthermore, the presence of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) in plasmonic Z-scheme structures enhances light absorption capacity by acting as electron traps. This work reports the effective synthesis of a novel ternary Tg-C3N4/Co/Ag3VO4 nanocomposite, together with its chemical structures, morphologies, optical, and electrochemical characterizations. The results demonstrated that metallic Co and Ag3VO4 NPs were uniformly encapsulated onto the thin graphitic carbon nitride (Tg-C3N4) nanosheets (NSs) with tiny particle sizes (>5nm). The Tg-C3N4/Co/Ag3VO4 photocatalysts showed significantly greater photocatalytic degradation performance in comparison to bare Tg-C3N4 and Ag3VO4 NPs. The degradation of Alizarin Red S (ARS) and rhodamine B (RhB) dyes under VL irradiation was utilized to assess the photocatalytic efficiencies of the fabricated samples. Tg-C3N4/Co/Ag3VO4 nanocomposite photocatalyst indicated greater photocatalytic degradation efficiency, where 98.35% of ARS and 96.7% of RhB dye were degraded within 60min, respectively. The enhanced photocatalytic degradation behaviours of Tg-C3N4/Co/Ag3VO4 can be ascribed to the developed plasmonic Z-scheme heterostructure to accelerate the separation and reduce the recombination rate of photocarriers. This work emphasizes the successful removal of organic contaminants by the invention of plasmonic photocatalysts in the unique Z-scheme structure.