Skip to main content
Log in

Higher photocatalytic removal of organic pollutants using pangolin-like composites made of 3–4 atomic layers of MoS2 nanosheets deposited on tourmaline

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Environmental Chemistry Letters Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Environmental pollution by organic pollutants is a serious concern which may be solved by photocatalytic degradation of pollutants, yet the efficiency of actual photocatalytic materials is limited. For instance, conventional MoS2 nanosheets tend to agglomerate, which hinders the access of pollutants to active sites. To overcome this challenge, we hypothesized that assembling MoS2 nanosheets on a mineral support would improve access to active sites. We synthesized a catalyst made of 3–4 atomic layers of MoS2 nanosheets deposited on tourmaline using a microwave hydrothermal method. Results show that tourmaline occurs as a polyhedron single crystal that supports the epitaxial growth of 2H-MoS2 layers on tourmaline (77\(\overline{3}\)) facets, while an intrinsic rolling up behavior of MoS2 layer from [002] to [106] on the mineral surface accounts for the curly morphology. The pangolin-like MoS2/tourmaline composite degrades rhodamine B much better than the pure MoS2 nanosheets assembled microspheres. This is explained by the reduced thickness of MoS2 nanosheets according to the density functional theory. Overall, our findings represent a new tactic for the cost-effective batch preparation of two-dimensional materials with high catalytic performance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

References

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51874115), the Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project of China (No. 2020T130166), the CAS Youth Innovation Promotion Association (No. 2019190), the Introduced Overseas Scholars Program of Hebei province, China (No. C201808), the Enterprise Science and Technology Commissioner Project of Tianjin City, China (No. 19JCTPJC56100) and the Excellent Young Scientist Foundation of Hebei province, China (No. E2018202241).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

FW and JL conceived and supervised experiments. MH, LC, XX and DW performed experiments. WL and FW performed and analyzed the STEM characterization. HL performed the DFT simulations. FW, WL, BF, MH and LC prepared and revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the experiments and manuscript preparation.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fei Wang.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interests

The authors declared that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (DOC 5995 KB)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hao, M., Li, H., Cui, L. et al. Higher photocatalytic removal of organic pollutants using pangolin-like composites made of 3–4 atomic layers of MoS2 nanosheets deposited on tourmaline. Environ Chem Lett 19, 3573–3582 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-021-01235-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-021-01235-6

Keywords

Navigation