Characterization and photocatalytic activity of CoCrO/g-CN nanocomposite for water treatment.

One of the materials that has recently been used to remove environmental pollution from industrial effluents with photocatalytic technology is cobalt chromate (CoCrO) nanoparticles. An effective way to improve the photocatalytic properties of materials is to composite them with other photocatalysts to prevent recombination of electron-holes and accelerate the transfer of oxidation/reduction agents. Graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) is an excellent choice due to its unique properties. In this research, CoCrO and its composite with g-CN (5, 10, and 15%) were synthesized by polyacrylamide gel method and characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, FTIR, UV-Vis spectroscopy techniques. The photocatalytic behavior of synthesized nanoparticles was investigated in the degradation process of methylene blue dye. The results showed that the composite samples have higher efficiency in photocatalytic activity than the pure CoCrO sample. Using CoCrO-15 wt%g-CN nanocomposite, after 80 min, methylene blue was completely degraded. The mechanism of degradation by CoCrO-g-CN nanocomposite was the superoxide radical produced by the reaction of electrons with oxygen absorbed on the catalyst surface, as well as optically produced holes directly.