Engineering the Photocatalytic Behaviors of g/C3N4‐Based Metal‐Free Materials for Degradation of a Representative Antibiotic

By Yanchun Deng, Jun Liu, Yanbin Huang, Mengmeng Ma, Kong Liu, Xiaomin Dou, Zhijie Wang, S. Qu, Zhanguo Wang. Advanced Functional Materials, 2020

174 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Graphitic carbon nitride (g/C3N4) is of promise as a highly efficient metal‐free photocatalyst, yet engineering the photocatalytic behaviours for efficiently and selectively degrading complicated molecules is still challenging. Herein, the photocatalytic behaviors of g/C3N4 are modified by tuning the energy band, optimizing the charge extraction, and decorating the cocatalyst. The combination shows a synergistic effect for boosting the photocatalytic degradation of a representative antibiotic, lincomycin, both in the degradation rate and the degree of decomposition. In comparison with the intrinsic g/C3N4, the structurally optimized photocatalyst shows a tenfold enhancement in degradation rate. Interestingly, various methods and experiments demonstrate the specific catalytic mechanisms for the multiple systems of g/C3N4‐based photocatalysts. In the degradation, the active species, including ·O2−, ·OH, and h+, have different contributions in the different photocatalysts. The intermediate, H2O2, plays an important role in the photocatalytic process, and the detailed functions and originations are clarified for the first time.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ea5c2225d89172987dcea471cd632ba3c473fc52