Facile and low temperature route to synthesis of CuS nanostructure in mesoporous material by solvothermal method

•We used solvothermal method for synthesis of CuS/MCM-41 nanocomposite.•CuS material has different phases. The synthesis only one phase of CuS is very hard.•We synthesized one phase of CuS nanostructure by solvothermal method in ethylene glycol.•It is observed different phases for CuS by solvothermal method in water solvent.•For characterization of heterogeneous catalysts we need to novel experimental techniques.

The synthesis of CuS nanomaterial in MCM-41 matrix has been realized by chemical synthesis between MCM-41, copper sulfate pentahydrate and thiourea via a solvothermal method in ethylene glycol and water, separately. X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) were used to characterize the products. At synthesized CuS/MCM-41 sample in ethylene glycol, X-ray diffraction and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy showed pure covellite phase of copper sulfide with high crystality. But prepared CuS/MCM-41 sample in water shows the covellite, chalcocite and the djurleite phase of copper sulfide nanostructures. The formation of CuS nanostructures was confirmed by FT-IR. Photocatalytic activity of CuS/MCM-41 nanocomposites was studied for degradation of Methylene Blue (MB) under visible light. The CuS/MCM-41 nanocomposite is more effective nanocatalyst than synthesized CuS/MCM-41 sample in water for degradation of methylene blue. Several parameters were examined, catalyst amount (0.1–1 g L−1), pH (1–13) and initial concentration of MB (0.96–10 ppm). The extent of degradation was estimated from the residual concentration by spectrophotometrically. The support size was obtained in the range 60–145 nm by TEM. In the same way, the average size of copper sulfide in CuSMCM-41E and CuS/MCM-41W nanostructures were obtained about 10 nm and 16 nm, respectively.

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