Facile synthesis of ternary g-C₃N₄/polyacrylic acid/CoFe₂O₄ nanocomposites for solar light irradiated photocatalytic and supercapacitor applications

The present work reports an enhanced photocatalytic and electrochemical performance of g-C3N4 assisted PAA on CoFe2O4 (g-C3N4/PAA/CoFe2O4) ternary nanocomposites (NCs). XRD analysis confirms the formation of a single-phase cubic spinel structure of CoFe2O4. The recombination of photogenerated charge carriers is greatly inhibited by the incorporation of PAA and g-C3N4 on CoFe2O4 and thus improves their separation efficiency. The size and size distribution of the pristine CF NPs is considerably influenced by the incorporation of PAA and gC(3)N(4) which was confirmed by SEM and TEM analysis, respectively. The ternary NCs (g-C3N4/PAA/CoFe2O4) exhibit superior photocatalytic degradation (91%) against crystal violet dye under direct solar light irradiation when compared with binary PAA/CoFe2O4 (79%) NCs and pristine CoFe2O4 (32%) NPs. GCD measurement shows that g-C3N4/PAA/CoFe2O4 NCs exhibits a high specific capacitance value (1470 F/g) than that of PAA/ CoFe2O4 NCs (572 F/g) and CoFe2O4 (214 F/g) NPs at a current density of 1 A/g which is due to the synergistic effect of g-C3N4 assisted PAA on CoFe2O4. Hence, it can be concluded that the resulting g-C3N4/PAA/CoFe2O4 NCs will deliver an excellent catalytic and electrochemical performance and hence we believe that our findings provide a new platform for efficient photocatalytic and supercapacitor applications.