Synthesis And Photocatalytic Properties Of Copper Sulfide Micro - Flower Structure Materials

Low dimensional nano/micrometer copper sulfide (CuS) has become the focus in recent years due to its special optical, electric, magnetic and thermal properties and the great potential application in photocatalysis, lithium batteries, sensors, environmental protection, light emitting diodes and biochemistry. The properties of copper sulfide depend on not only the stoichiometric ratio of copper and sulfide, but also the size and shape. So it’s of importance to prepare the product with controllable dimensionality and morphology, and make the relationship clear between structures and properties.In this thesis, flower-like micro-structure copper sulfide with the diameters of3～5μm were successfully prepared in an aproticthe polar solvent system of the dimethylformamide(DMF) solution via a solvothermal process, using copper chloride and thiourea as starting materials. The as-synthesized copper sulfide products were well characterized by several techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), Photoluminescence (PL), Ultraviolet-visible Spectroscopy (UV-Vis). The photocatalysis of cationic dye Rhodamine B(RhB) was carried out for the assessment of the photocatalytic activity of the products, comparing performance with another sphere structure. It clearly demonstrates that the base flakes with thicknesses of100-200nm assemble into the special flower-like micro-structure copper sulfide. The morphologies of the products are greatly influenced by reaction time and solvent system. The UV-visible spectrum exhibits that the as-obtained copper sulfide has strong and board absorption at the wavelength of608nm and weak absorption at the wavelength of320nm, while the photoluminescent spectrum shows an emission band around560nm. The solid flower-like copper sulfide with assembled flakes has been shown to be very effective for photocatalysis. The catalysis involving the as-prepared copper sulfide micro-structure just requires8minutes to completely decompose RhB, meanwhile, the photocatalytic activity is256.7%higher than the sphere.