Highly efficient and stable photocatalytic properties of CdS/FeS nanocomposites

Abstract

In this paper, three different molar ratios of CdS/FeS nanocomposites were successfully synthesized via a liquid-phase thermal decomposition of a single precursor and an ion adsorption method. A comparative study on the transient photocurrents using CdS/FeS (2 : 1, 5 : 1, and 8 : 1) nanocomposites under xenon lamp (λ ≥ 400 nm) irradiation has been performed that found that the CdS/FeS (8 : 1) sample exhibited the highest photocurrent, which was 54 times that of the CdS/FeS (2 : 1) sample. Rhodamine B (RhB) was used as a model pollutant to evaluate the sample's photocatalytic efficiency and stability. RhB degradation efficiencies of CdS/FeS (2 : 1, 5 : 1, and 8 : 1) nanocomposites were 95.7%, 99.0% and 94.6%, respectively. Besides, after 5 repeated experiments under sunlight, the degradation efficiency of RhB was still around 97.4%, showing the good photocatalytic stability of the CdS/FeS (5 : 1) nanocomposite.