An efficient visible light photocatalyst poly(3-hexylthiophene)/CdS nanocomposite with enhanced antiphotocorrosion property

Abstract A series of poly(3-hexylthiophene)/CdS (P3HT/CdS) nanocomposites with P3HT content range of 1–4 wt% were successfully synthesized by the chemisorption method. P3HT/CdS nanocomposites were characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The photocatalytic activities of P3HT/CdS nanocomposites were investigated by evaluating the degradation of methyl orange (MO) under visible light irradiation. The nanocomposites exhibited much higher visible light photocatalytic activity than pure CdS due to the higher efficiency of charge separation and transference in the nanocomposites. The optimum initial weight content of P3HT in the nanocomposites was found to be ca. 2.0 wt%. The recycling run experiments showed that P3HT/CdS possessed excellent photocatalytic stability. The atomic absorption spectrometric determination of Cd in the filtrate after the recycling runs indicated that the antiphotocorrosion property of CdS was efficiently improved by P3HT modification. A carriers trapping experiment indicated that both photogenerated holes and electrons were the main active species in the MO photodegradation process catalyzed by P3HT/CdS. The photocatalytic and antiphotocorrosion mechanism of the nanocomposites was discussed.