Evaluation of photocatalytic performance for novel Cr₂S₃–SiO₂ nano-catalyst: optimization, quenching, antimicrobial studies

In this study, The Cr₂S₃ which incorporated SiO₂ was synthesized by ultrasonic sol-gel method. In this sense, the mutagenic dyes were removed by the Cr₂S₃–SiO₂ nanocomposites under UV light. The structure of the prepared catalyst was evaluated by x-ray diffraction and photoelectron spectroscopy. The morphology of the nanomaterial was studied by scanning electron microscopy-EDS and dynamic light scattering. In order to evaluate the band gap energy, the Cr₂S₃–SiO₂ nanocomposites were analyzed by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). The crystallite size and band-gap values of Cr₂S₃-SiO₂-1 were 37.11 nm, and 2.9 eV, respectively. The activity of Cr₂S₃–SiO₂ nanocomposites demonstrated the exceptional performance in the Disperse Blue 291 and Dispersed Violet 93 dyes degradation after 50 min at pH: 10 under UV light illumination. The result demonstrates that the quencher does not have an influence on photo-degradation of the Disperse Blue 291 and Dispersed Violet 93 dyes. The antimicrobial data of Cr₂S₃–SiO₂ were studied and the results show that the Cr₂S₃–SiO₂ has fungicidal and bactericidal attributes. (paper)