Synthesis and characterization of copper based spinel and thiospinel nanocomposites for environmental applications

Abstract

Extensive researches have been devoted on visible light response photocatalysts towards degradation of organic pollutants and dye solutions present in the industrial effluents. Apart from the conventional TiO2 and ZnO photocatalyst, the copper based CuO and CuS have been explored largely as photocatalysts due to their high visible light absorption and less recombination but their industrial applications were limited due to the poor structural stability. In the recent past years, As an alternate to the simple copper oxide and sulphides the copper based spinel and thiospinel systems were developed. These ternary transition metal oxides and sulfides AB2X4 (X= O, S) referred as spinels and thiospinels have attracted interest among the researchers owing to its interesting optical, electrical and magnetic properties. Owing to the presence of mixed oxidation state in the system it provides more stability, electronic conductivity and enhanced photo response than simple metal oxides and sulphides. Especially copper based spinels and thiospinels such as CuCr2O4, CuFe2O4, and CuCo2S4 were developed and very sparsely utilized in the process of photocatalysis. In this work, we prepared different types of copper based spinel and thiospinel composites and evaluated its photocatalytic activity for various pollutants removal in visible light range. newlineIn this work we synthesized copper based spinel and thiospinel nanocomposites by simple synthesis methodolgy for improved structural and chemical stability for superior photocatalytic performance. The various synthesized composites were subjected to basic characterization studies such as XRD, FT-IR, SEM, TEM, UV-DRS, XPS. newline