Biomolecule-Assisted Hydrothermal Synthesis of Copper Aluminium Sulfide: Application for Dye Degradation
Abstract
In the current study, for the first-time ternary chalcopyrite copper aluminium sulfide (CuAlS2) nanoparticles were successfully synthesized by biomolecule assisted hydrothermal method. L-cysteine was used as a source of sulfur along with chlorides of copper and aluminium as Cu and Al sources, respectively. The synthesized nanoparticles were further characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), ultraviolet visible spectroscopy (UV) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) technique. The Raman spectroscopy technique was used to study vibrational modes of CuAlS2 nanoparticles at room temperature. Photoluminescence (PL) spectra illustrates that a strong purple emission observed at 393 nm. The surface area and porosity were calculated using Brunauer−Emmett−Teller (BET) surface area analysis technique. Further, CuAlS2 nanoparticles have shown excellent catalytic activity for Rhodamine B dye (RhB) degradation. The RhB dye degradation reaction progress was confirmed by High performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) analysis. The photocatalytic efficiency was found to be around 87 %. The rate of degradation for Rh B dye was 0.013 min-1.