Highly Efficient Visible Light Active 2D-2D Nanocomposites of N-ZnO-g-C3N4 for Photocatalytic Degradation of Diverse Industrial Pollutants

In the drive towards the development of efficient photocatalytic materials for environmental remediation, two dimensional (2D) materials have drawn huge attention in the recent time. Towards this end, we report two dimensional (2D) nanocomposite by loading N-doped ZnO nanosheets over graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) nanosheets by hydrothermal synthesis method. As prepared 2D-2D nanocomposite exhibit excellent photocatalytic activity towards degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) dye from water under visible light irradiation. Moreover, the optimized nanocomposite with 7wt% of N-ZnO nanosheets (GNZ7) shows superior photocatalytic activity for degradation of several industrial pollutants including thiabendazole (TBZ), nitrobenzene (NB) and tetracycline (TC). The photoluminescence studies confirmed the improved interfacial charge separation which profoundly promotes their transfer to the reaction sites and hence responsible for the enhanced photocatalytic activity. In addition, the photocatalytic mechanism has been elucidated using active species trapping experiments which validate that hydroxyl radicals (*OH) and holes (h(+)) play a vital role in the degradation process. Furthermore, reusability experiments confirm the excellent stability of N-ZnO-g-C3N4 nanocomposites. Hence, it can be summarized that such 2D-2D nanocomposite have great potential to degrade diverse industrial pollutants and provides new insights for the fabrication of such nanocomposites for various applications.