Photochemical Synthesis of Nanosheet Tin Di/Sulfide with Sunlight Response on Water Pollutant Degradation

The photochemical synthesis of two-dimensional (2D) nanostructured from semiconductor materials is unique and challenging. We report, for the first time, the photochemical synthesis of 2D tin di/sulfide (PS-SnS₂_-x, x = 0 or 1) from thioacetamide (TAA) and tin (IV) chloride in an aqueous system. The synthesized PS-SnS₂_-x were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), a particle size distribution analyzer, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermal analysis, UV⁻Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DR UV⁻Vis), and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. In this study, the PS-SnS₂_-x showed hexagonally closed-packed crystals having nanosheets morphology with the average size of 870 nm. Furthermore, the nanosheets PS-SnS₂_-x demonstrated reusable photo-degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye as a water pollutant, owing to the stable electronic conducting properties with estimated bandgap (E_g) at ~2.5 eV. Importantly, the study provides a green protocol by using photochemical synthesis to produce 2D nanosheets of semiconductor materials showing photo-degradation activity under sunlight response.