Facile synthesis of g-C3N4 nanosheets anchored with AgCl and CDs and its efficient activity in reduction of Cr(VI)

Heavy metal pollutants such as Cr(VI), due to acute toxicity, have been proved to cause hazards to most of the organisms [1]. Semiconductor-based photocatalysis has attracted much more consideration, owing to potential utilization in water purification. For this purpose, g-C3N4 was introduced as semiconductor with narrow band gap energy. However, due to its shortcomings including smaller specific surface area, it was prepared as nanosheets of g-C3N4 (g- C3N4-NS) [2, 3]. In addition, to retardation of the electron–hole pairs from recombination, carbon dots (CDs) are deposited over the g-C3N4-NS photocatalyst [3]. In this work, we focused on integration of AgCl with g-C3N4-NS/CDs nanocomposite. The superior visible-light photoactivity of the g-C3N4-NS/CDs/AgCl (30%) photocatalyst was observed in photoreduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III). Interestingly, the reduction rate constant over the ternary nanocomposite was 15.3 times premier than the g-C3N4 photocatalyst. Therefore, it was concluded that significantly improved photocatalytic performance of the fabricated photocatalyst can be attributed to the impressive light harvesting capability in visible range and low recombination rate for the e-/h+ pairs.