High efficient and stable photocatalytic properties of CdS/FeS nanocomposites

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. Comparative study on the transient photocurrents using CdS/FeS (2:1, 5:1, 8:1) nanocomposites under xenon lamp (λ ≥ 400 nm) irradiations has been performed 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 samples photocatalytic efficiency and stability. RhB degradation efficiencies of CdS/FeS (2:1, 5:1, 8:1) nanocomposites was 95.7%, 99.0% and 94.6%, respectively. Besides, after 5 times 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.