Porous carbon nitride nanosheets (PCNs) have been prepared for the first time by a simple liquid exfoliation method via probe sonication. These mesoporous nanosheets of around 5 nm in thickness combine several advantages including high surface area, enhanced light absorption and excellent water dispersity. It can be used as a versatile support for co-catalyst loading for photocatalytic dye degr...

Photocatalytic membranes exhibit great potential for water treatment since they combine the filtration and photo degradation in a single unit. Although blending photocatalytic nanoparticles into polymeric thin film remains the simplest method to prepare the photocatalytic membrane, the entrapped photocatalyst showed less catalytic activity due to the agglomeration and shielding effects in the p...

Since the 1970s, splitting water using solar energy has been a focus of great attention as a possible means for converting solar energy to chemical energy in the form of clean and renewable hydrogen fuel. Approaches to solar water splitting include photocatalytic water splitting with homogeneous or heterogeneous photocatalysts, photoelectrochemical or photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) water splitting...

Bicrystalline α-Fe2O3 nanoblades (NBs) synthesized by thermal oxidation of iron foils were reduced in vacuum, to study the effect of reduction treatment on microstructural changes and photocatalytic properties. After the vacuum reduction, most bicrystalline α-Fe2O3 NBs transform into single-layered NBs, which contain more defects such as oxygen vacancies, perfect dislocations and dense pores. B...

The stabilities and electronic/band structures of single-layer bismuth oxyhalides have been investigated by employing first-principles calculations. The results indicate that the single-layer bismuth oxyhalide materials, except for BiOF, have robust energetic and dynamical stabilities because of their low formation energies and the absence of imaginary frequencies within the entire Brillouin zo...

In the present study, comparison of  photocatalytic activity of nanostructures semiconductor zinc oxide (ZnO) was prepared using the different methods on the degradation of organic dye such as methylene blue that was investigated. Previous studies have proved that such semiconductors can degrade most kinds of persistent organic pollutants, such as detergents, dyes, pesticides and volatile organ...

C3N4/TiO2 hybrid photocatalysts with highly enhanced photocatalytic performance were prepared by a facile ball milling method. A layered structure of g-C3N4 was formed on the surface of TiO2. The mechanochemical process can promote the dispersion of C3N4 on the surface of TiO2 particles, to form a single layer hybrid structure and a multi-layer core-shell structure. The photocatalytic activitie...