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An effective heterojunction with robust charge separation and enormous degradation efficiency is the major task for photocatalyst preparation. In this study, we have prepared the FeCo 2 O 4 -loaded g-C 3 N 4 nanosheet by the sol-gel-assisted calcination method for photo-Fenton-like degradation under visible-light irradiation by activating persulfate. The nanocomposite exhibits a higher charge separation efficiency than pure g-C 3 N 4 and FeCo 2 O 4 for the degradation reaction against naproxen drugs. An effective interaction between the nanoparticles increases the degradation efficiency up to 91% with a synergistic index of 73.62%. Moreover, the nanocomposite exhibits a 78% mineralization efficiency against the naproxen pollutant under visible-light irradiation. For practical implementation, the degradation reaction was tested with various pH values, different water sources (DI, lake, and tap water), and light sources (LED (visible)/direct sunlight (UV-visible)). Moreover, the possible degradation mechanism predicted by the elemental trapping experiment and the recycling experiment clearly revealed that the heterojunction composite has a high enough degradation stability., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2021 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

Development of photo detectors based on different semiconducting materials with high performance has been in progress in recent past, however, there is a lot of difficulties in developing the more effective photo detectors-based devices with high responsivity, detectivity and quantum efficiency. Hence, we have synthesized pure CuS and CuO@CuS core-shell heterostructure based photo detectors with high performance by simple and cost-effective two-step chemical co-precipitation method. The phase purity of CuS and CuO@CuS composite was observed by XRD analysis and the result were verified with Raman spectroscopy studies. Sphere like morphology of pure CuS and core-shell structure formation of CuO@CuS are observed with scanning and transmission electron microscopes. The presence of expected elements has been confirmed with EDX elemental mapping. Light harvesting photodiodes were fabricated by using n-type silicon substrate through drop cost method. Photo sensitive parameters of fabricated diodes were analyzed by I-V characteristics. The p-CuO@CuS (1:1)/n-Si diode owned a maximum photosensitivity (Ps) ∼ 7.76 × 10 4 %, photoresponsivity (R) ∼ 798.61 mA/W, external quantum efficiency ( E Q E )∼309.66 % and specific detectivity (D*) ∼ 8.19 × 10 11 Jones when compared to p-CuS/n-Si diode. The obtained results revealed that the core/shell heterostructure of CuO@CuS is the most appropriate for photo detection., Competing Interests: Authors declares that there is no conflict of interest in current article., (© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)