Enhanced photocatalytic activity of plasmonic Au nanoparticles incorporated MoS2 nanosheets for degradation of organic dyes
Abstract
In the present paper, we investigate the effect of plasmonic Au nanoparticles (NPs) decoration on the photocatalytic efficiency of MoS2 nanosheets. The Au NPs are grown on the surface of chemically exfoliated MoS2 nanosheets by chemical reduction method. Au-MoS2 nanostructures (NSs) are characterized by X-ray diffractometer, Raman spectrometer, absorption spectrophotometer, and transmission electron microscopy. Exfoliated MoS2 and Au-MoS2 NSs are used to study the photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes methyl red (MR) and methylene blue (MB). Under UV-Visible light irradiation, pristine MoS2 shows photo degradation efficiencies between 30% to 46.9% for MR and 23.3% to 44% for MB, with varying exposure times from 30 to 120 min, respectively. However, Au-MoS2 NSs with maximum Au NPs concentration show enhanced degradation efficiency from 70.2 to 96.7% for MR, and from 65.2 to 94.3% for MB. The manifold enhancement of degradation efficiency for both the dyes with Au-MoS2 NSs may be attributed to the presence of Au NPs acting as charge trapping sites in the NSs. We believe this study would have potential application in battling the ill-effects of environmental degradation, which poses a major threat to humans as well as biodiversity.