Zinc oxide/graphene‐like tungsten disulphide nanosheet photocatalysts: Synthesis and enhanced photocatalytic activity under visible‐light irradiation

A highly efficient zinc oxide/graphene‐like tungsten disulphide nanosheet (ZnO/WS2) was synthesized by a facile two‐step method and characterized via XRD, SEM, TEM, XPS, BET, UV‐Vis DRS, PL, etc. The photocatalytic activity of the ZnO/WS2 photocatalyst was estimated via the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) dye under 500 W tungsten lamp radiation. Compared with ZnO, ZnO/WS2 photocatalyst presented a high degradation efficiency (95.71 %) within 120 min under visible‐light irradiation, indicating that ZnO/WS2 photocatalyst had excellent photocatalytic activity. Photocatalytic reaction followed the first‐order model kinetics, and ZnO/WS2 photocatalyst remained a relatively higher photocatalytic activity after four successive recycles, which verified that the structure of ZnO/WS2 photocatalyst was stable and had potential applications in the removal of dye wastewater. At last, the possible mechanism for the photocatalytic degradation of dyes over ZnO/WS2 photocatalysts was also discussed.