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Fabrication of visible light active Mn-doped Bi2WO6-GO/MoS2 heterostructure for enhanced photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue

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Abstract

The increase in environmental pollution has led to an increased investigation in the development of novel ternary photocatalytic systems for remediation. These photocatalytic systems exhibit superior photocatalytic action for the removal of pollutants because of their visible light active bandgaps. A highly effective visible light active ternary heterojunction was fabricated using a hydrothermal method assisted by ultrasonication. Herein, we report the in situ hydrothermal synthesis of Mn-doped Bi2WO6-GO/ MoS2 photocatalyst, efficiently exhibiting greater photocatalytic activity for the wastewater treatment under solar light. The binary metal sulphide (MoS2) used as a co-catalyst, acted as an electron collector and graphene oxide (GO) as a support material for interfacial electron transfer to and from bismuth tungstate and MoS2. The as-prepared samples were characterized using SEM-EDX, FT-IR, XRD, XPS, BET, PL, and UV–Vis techniques. The bandgap of the novel photocatalyst was found in the visible region (2.2 eV) which helped in suppressing photoinduced electron-hole pairs recombination. The ternary Mn-doped Bi2WO6-GO/MoS2 showed 99% methylene blue removal after 60 minutes of sunlight irradiation at the optimum conditions of pH 8, catalyst dose 50 mg/100ml, and initial MB concentration of 10ppm under sunlight irradiation. The doped ternary heterostructure has proved to be an effective sunlight-active photocatalyst that can be reused without substantial loss in photocatalytic efficiency.

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The datasets used and/or analyzed in this study are available in the manuscript and supplementary information additional information can be asked from the corresponding author upon request.

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Funding

This research was funded by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan, under Indigenous 5000 Ph.D. Fellowship with student PIN “pin # 518-121977-2PS5-032 (50043428)”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, 38040, Pakistan

    Noor Tahir, Muhammad Zahid & Ijaz Ahmad Bhatti

  2. Department of Physics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, 38040, Pakistan

    Yasir Jamil

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  1. Noor Tahir
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  2. Muhammad Zahid
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  3. Ijaz Ahmad Bhatti
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  4. Yasir Jamil
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Contributions

Noor Tahir: Data curation, visualization, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing. Muhammad Zahid: conceptualization, project administration, resources, supervision, writing—review & editing. Ijaz Ahmad Bhatti: conceptualization, methodology, software, writing—review & editing. Yasir Jamil: visualization, investigation, validation.

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Correspondence to Muhammad Zahid.

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Tahir, N., Zahid, M., Bhatti, I.A. et al. Fabrication of visible light active Mn-doped Bi2WO6-GO/MoS2 heterostructure for enhanced photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 6552–6567 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16094-5

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