Ag Loading Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity of g-CN Porous Nanosheets for Decomposition of Organic Pollutants.

The g-CN porous nanosheets with different loading amount of Ag nanoparticles (NPs) are successfully prepared by a simple liquid-phase reduction method. These Ag/g-CN composites have an improved photocatalytic performance for decomposing organic pollutants compared with that of pure g-CN nanosheets. Many measurements have been used for characterizing the samples, such as XRD, FTIR, UV-Vis DRS, PL, XPS, EDS, SEM, and TEM. In Ag/g-CN, the Ag NPs are uniformly coated on the g-CN surface, the diameter is mainly in the range of 8~18 nanometers. Loading of Ag NPs expand the response to the visible light for g-CN and increasing the producing rate of photogenerated e-h pairs. The loading of silver NPs obviously enhances the photocatalytic activity of CN nanosheets toward the Rhodamine B (RhB) decomposition under the simulated sunlight irradiation. With different loading amounts of Ag NPs, Ag/g-CN (3 wt% of Ag) showed the highest photocatalytic activity for RhB decomposition among these as-prepared samples, which is 10 times of the rate of pure CN. Based on the experimental results, a possible photocatalytic mechanism for Ag/g-CN is proposed.