Under dark and visible light: fast degradation of methylene blue in the presence of Ag–In–Ni–S nanocomposites

Abstract

Ag–In–Ni–S nanocomposites of different shapes were productively achieved in water using thioacetamide at different temperatures in the presence of SDS with uniform size distributions. It was found that variation of the sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) concentration and the temperature had a significant influence on the morphology of Ag–In–Ni–S and the photocatalytic activity. The newly synthesized Ag–In–Ni–S nanocomposites were fully characterized by powder XRD, IR, UV-vis, DRS, FE-SEM, TEM, EDX, XPS, BET and TGA. The catalytic activities were measured by the degradation of methylene blue (MB) in the absence and presence of visible light (sunlight and 100 W tungsten lamp). The catalyst was found to be effective in degrading MB through the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) which was confirmed using terephthalic acid (TA), dihydrorhodamine 123 (DHR123) treatment and ESI mass spectroscopy. The removal efficiency of MB by the nanocomposites is very fast, nearly quantitative and repeatable up to five cycles.