Manganese and oxygen dual-doping MoS2 boosts reduction and adsorption activity toward efficient recovery of gold(I) from thiosulfate solutions

The necessity for application of molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) in photocatalytic reduction field required speedy improvement with high reduction and adsorption performance. Here, manganese (Mn) and oxygen (O) dual-doping strategy were taken for demonstrating that enhancing photocatalytic reduction could achieve simultaneous modulation of the reduction and adsorption parameters by optimizing the electronic configuration and hydrophilicity ability in MoS 2 . Benefiting from the Mn and O dual-doping collective effect, the developed Mn,O-MoS 2 exhibited outstanding photocatalytic reduction and recovery performances of gold(I) from thiosulfate leaching solutions with reduction capacity of 1386.98 mg/g and the corresponding recovery of 92.50%. Besides, Mn and O atoms dual doping in MoS 2 accelerated the recovery rate, which was 3 folds higher compared with that of MoS 2 . Experimental and first-principle approaches suggested that the reduction and adsorption ability of MoS 2 were strengthened through tuning the electronic structure and surface property with Mn and O dopants : (1) Mn atoms notably enhanced the conductivity and optimized the electronic structure for facilitating the reduction performance; (2) The incorporated O atoms greatly promoted the adsorption of [Au(S 2 O 3 ) 2 ] 3- by improving the affinity of water molecules and Mn,O-MoS 2 . The work provides a promising strategy to manipulate two-dimensional materials for various applications about catalysts and adsorbent.