Photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue over N-doped MnWO4 under visible light irradiation

In recent years, the transition-metal tungstate materials with formula MWO₄ have attracted much attention in photocatalytic environmental purification due to their interesting structural and optical properties. Among the others, manganese tungstate (MnWO₄) has attracted particular attention because of its appropriate bandgap energy (2.67 ​eV) with tunable optical and electrical properties, chemical stability, and low cost which makes a suitable photocatalyst. Nevertheless, the manganese tungstate (MnWO₄) based materials are less explored as visible light responsive photocatalysts for wastewater purification. Hence, both parent and N-doped MnWO₄ are synthesized by a hydrothermal method with different nitrogen contents (5, 10, and 15 ​mol%). The as-prepared photocatalysts were characterized by XRD, SEM-EDS, TEM-SAED, FT-IR, UV–Vis DRS, XPS and PL techniques. The photocatalytic activities of the synthesized samples were evaluated by degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye under the visible light irradiation. All the N-doped MnWO₄ samples exhibited enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity compared to the parent MnWO₄, and the optimal dopant amount of nitrogen was 15 mol% for the best photocatalytic activity. The active species generated during the process of MB degradation are investigated by scavenging experiments. Further, the reusability of the 15 ​mol% N-doped MnWO₄ photocatalyst was examined in three consecutive catalytic runs.