Silver-graphite carbon nitride (Ag/g-C3N4) was designed and synthesized through a simple green chemical route. The photocatalyst was comprehensively characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The HR-TEM results indicate that the synthesized Ag spherical like nanoparticles were randomly loaded on the surface of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4). In addition, the Ag/g-C3N4 nanocomposites exhibited 2.5 times higher photocatalytic activity than pristine g-C3N4 for the degradation of malachite green (MG) dye under UV irradiation. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.