A Facile Synthesis of WS₂/g-C₃N₄ Composites with Improved Photocatalytic Activity

Visible-light-driven photocatalysis has received considerable attention in the environmental treatment in recent years. In this paper, WS₂/g-C₃N₄ composite photocatalysts with various contents of WS₂ and g-C₃N₄ were synthesized by a facile method via heating the mixtures of tungstic acid and thiourea, and denoted as nWCN, where n is weight ratio of thiourea to tungstic acid. The composites were characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS, TEM, IR, Raman spectroscopy, XPS, TGA, and UV–vis DRS. The characterizations reveal that the composites contain WS₂ nanosheets coated by g-C₃N₄ and the relative content of WS₂ in the composites decreases with increasing amount of thiourea in the reaction mixtures. All the composites exhibited the better photocatalytic activity in degradation of methylene blue in aqueous solution than the single components, WS₂, and g-C₃N₄. Among them, 7WCN sample performed the highest activity. A synergistic effect between WS₂ and g-C₃N₄ in photocatalytic activity for the composites was observed.