Effect of the morphology of CuS upon the photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes

Abstract

A variety of well defined, highly symmetrical, super complex and hierarchical architectures of covellite copper sulfide have been successfully prepared by a simple solvothermal approach. The effects of various influencing parameters on the formation of CuS hierarchical architectures were precisely investigated and a possible formation mechanism has been elucidated. The reaction time was found to be a critical factor in controlling the CuS architecture and highly complex structures were obtained with elongated reaction times. The as-synthesized architectures exhibited excellent photocatalytic activities in the visible region for the degradation of individual dyes (methylene blue and rhodamine B) and their mixed solutions in the presence of H₂O₂. The efficient photocatalytic activity can be attributed to the carefully controlled hierarchical CuS structures. Overall, this study is of great importance in the “bottom-up” assembly of copper sulfide nanoplates to obtain highly complex structures which offer a good opportunity to understand the fundamental significance of atypical structures for their potential applications.