A comparative study of dirac 2D materials, TMDCs and 2D insulators with regard to their structures and photocatalytic/sonophotocatalytic behavior

A new era in the development of advanced functional materials was partly sparked by the discovery of 2D materials. In this respect, graphene is believed to have marked the origin of 2D materials. The ability to fabricate a vast majority of such advanced nanomaterials hinges upon the strength of interplanar interactions realized in their respective bulk counterparts. The present study undertakes the comparative analysis of oft-explored 2D materials such as Dirac 2D materials (GO, rGO), TMDCs (MoS₂) and 2D insulators (BN) in the context of their structural, optical, thermal and morphological parameters. Despite implementing several methodologies including a combination of physical, chemical and biological techniques, aquatic and microbial pollution remains a challenge to this day. More recently, nanomaterials have attracted considerable attention as these are believed to hold an extraordinary prospective for utilization toward environmental remediation. Among several probable candidates, 2D materials hold immense appeal due to its useful properties including high absorptivity and large surface area, which enable them to be employed for multifaceted applications. In the present study, a wide range of experimental results extracted from numerous characterization techniques (i.e., XRD, UV–Vis, FTIR, HR-TEM, XPS, DSC-TGA, and Raman) is included. For instance, optical data obtained from these materials point toward a narrow bandgap, while HR-TEM images show large surface area, which suggests that these materials hold promising prospect for use in applications that require strong catalytic activity. Further experimental results indicate that photocatalytic and sonophotocatalytic potential is significantly enhanced by 2D materials. In this respect, rGO showed 60% degradation of synthetic pollutant in 100 min and MoS₂ realized 55% degradation during the same duration. The present study suggests that rGO may be used as a superior photocatalyst in wastewater treatment and related environmental applications. Moreover, the sonophotocatalytic behavior exhibited by these materials showed consistently higher efficiency compared to the respective individual processes which is attributed to the formation of larger amounts of electron–hole pairs.