Effect of the morphology of CuS upon the photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes

A variety of well defined, highly symmetrical, super complex and hierarchical architectures of covellite copper sulfide have been successfully prepared by a simple solvothermal approach. The effects of various influencing parameters on the formation of CuS hierarchical architectures were precisely investigated and a possible formation mechanism has been elucidated. The reaction time was found to be a critical factor in controlling the CuS architecture and highly complex structures were obtained with elongated reaction times. The as-synthesized architectures exhibited excellent photocatalytic activities in the visible region for the degradation of individual dyes (methylene blue and rhodamine B) and their mixed solutions in the presence of H2O2. The efficient photocatalytic activity can be attributed to the carefully controlled hierarchical CuS structures. Overall, this study is of great importance in the "bottomup" assembly of copper sulfide nanoplates to obtain highly complex structures which offer a good opportunity to understand the fundamental significance of atypical structures for their potential applications.Chemistry, MultidisciplinarySCI(E)EI6ARTICLEcbcao@bit.edu.cn10863447-63456