Enhanced photocatalytic performance for water purification via oxygen-injected SnS2 nanosheets

The shortage of fresh water resources has become an unavoidable problem in social and economic development. It is desirable and urgent to deal with the increasingly serious environmental pollution based on sustainable energy. Herein, we developed oxygen-injected SnS2 (SnS2−xOx) nanosheets to acquire enhanced photocatalytic degradation performance on dye-containing wastewater. Mechanism studies proved that O atoms optimize the electronic structure of SnS2, which were further verified by density functional theory (DFT) calculation. As a result, SnS2−xOx nanosheets exhibited that the typical dye removal efficiency reached at ∼93%, ∼91% and ∼85% toward RhB, GR and MB, respectively with worth stability. This work not only exploited a high degradation performance photocatalyst for water purification, but also lay a foundation for the atomic functionalization of photocatalysts.