One-step preparation of well-dispersed spindle-like Fe2O3 nanoparticles on g-C3N4 as highly efficient photocatalysts.

Abstract Photocatalysis has attracted wide attention due to its outstanding advantages in dealing with sewage. And compounds of metal oxides and g-C3N4 that possess Z-type heterojunctions have become the star photocatalysts in degrading pollutants. In this paper, a novel one-step method for the preparation of highly efficient photocatalyst of Fe2O3/g-C3N4, using Fe (NO3)3 and urea as raw materials, is described. Under the optimized condition, the one-step synthesized photocatalyst of FeGCN-0.10 showed higher photocatalytic performance compared with the multi-step prepared photocatalyst, and the rate of removing basic fuchsin was 92% (210 min), which was 19.5% higher than that of the latter. Furthermore, different methods were also applied for characterizing Fe2O3/g-C3N4. Structural characterization results confirmed the composites of Fe2O3/g-C3N4. Morphological characterization results showed that spindle-like Fe2O3 particles were distributed more evenly on the layered g-C3N4 compared with the impregnation method. Optical characterization results demonstrated the high intensity of the separated photo-generated electron-hole pairs and of Fe2O3/g-C3N4, which uncovered the removing mechanism of basic fuchsin.