Assembly of AgI nanoparticles and ultrathin g-C3N4 nanosheets codecorated Bi2WO6 direct dual Z-scheme photocatalyst: An efficient, sustainable and heterogeneous catalyst with enhanced photocatalytic…

By Wen-jing Xue, Danlian Huang, Jing Li, Guangming Zeng, Rui Deng, Yang Yang, Shan Chen, Zhihao Li, Xiaomin Gong, Bo Li. Chemical Engineering Journal, 2019

236 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract A novel direct dual Z-scheme g-C3N4/Bi2WO6/AgI (CBA) ternary heterojunction photocatalyst was fabricated through the hydrothermal reaction and a succedent in-situ precipitation route for the first time. Systematic studies showed that the 20% AgI and 60% g-C3N4 co-modified Bi2WO6 presented the highest photocatalytic performance, achieving 91.13% removal efficiency of tetracycline within 60 min, which was 10.04 times that of pure Bi2WO6. The enhanced photocatalytic performance mainly derived from the co-effects of Bi2WO6, g-C3N4 and AgI and could be summarized as following: i) The g-C3N4 nanosheets could be used as carriers for dispersion of Bi2WO6 and AgI nanoparticles, preventing their agglomeration; ii) The addition of g-C3N4 and AgI could promote the light absorption, resulting in the strengthened light harvesting ability; iii) The intimate contact of Bi2WO6, g-C3N4, and AgI favored the separation and transfer of photogenerated carriers. Further analysis demonstrated that the path of photogenerated electrons moved exhibited a direct dual Z-scheme pattern in ternary heterojunction, which not only fulfilled the efficient spatial separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs but also endowed the composites with strong redox capability, thereby boosting the photodegradation efficiency of CBA composite. This work opens a new strategy to constructing multi-component Z-scheme photocatalytic system for environmental decontamination.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1604b390b84eadb6fbe5c0ee9587f7c35d893d44