Visible-light-driven photocatalytic and chemical sensing properties of SnS2 nanoflakes

This work demonstrated the successful and facile large-scale synthesis and characterizations of SnS2 nanoflakes. The detailed morphological studies revealed that the synthesized products were nanoflakes and were grown in large quantity. The XRD pattern and detailed compositional studies confirmed that the synthesized SnS2 nanoflakes were well-crystalline and possessing hexagonal SnS2 phase. The synthesized SnS2 nanoflakes were used as efficient photocatalysts for photocatalytic degradation and effective electron mediators for the fabrication of chemical sensor. The photocatalytic properties of SnS2 nanoflakes towards the photocatalytic degradation of Rhodamine B dye under visible light irradiation showed reasonably good degradation of ∼61%. Moreover, the as-synthesized SnS2 nanoflakes were used as efficient electron mediators for the fabrication of nitroaniline chemical sensor by simple I-V technique. Very high-sensitivity of ∼ 505.82±0.02 mAcm−2.(mole/L)−1 and experimental detection limit of ∼15×10−6 (mole/L) in a short response time of ∼10.0 s with LDR in the range of 15.6×10−6–0.5×10−3 mole L−1 were observed for the fabricated nitroaniline chemical sensor. The observed results indicated that the SnS2 nanoflakes can efficiently be used as visible-light-driven photocatalysts and the fabrication of ultra-high sensitive chemical sensors.