A novel high-efficiency photocatalyst Ta2O5/PtCl2 nanosheets for benzotriazole degradation

Abstract

As a new type of organic pollutant, benzotriazole seriously threatens the ecological environment and human health. In recent years, semiconductor photocatalytic technology has been widely used in the field of photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants, but there are still few studies on the degradation of benzotriazole, and the degradation efficiency needs to be improved. In this paper, PtCl2 was applied in the field of photocatalysis for the first time, and it was loaded on Ta2O5 nanosheets to prepared a novel heterojunction photocatalyst Ta2O5/PtCl2 nanosheets by chemical vapor deposition method. The study found that Ta2O5/PtCl2 nanosheets has excellent visible light absorption capacity due to its local surface plasma resonance (LSPR) effect. Ta2O5/PtCl2 nanosheets achieves the best degradation effect when the mass ratio of Ta2O5 and PtCl2 is 1:1, it can remove about 99% of rhodamine B (5 mg/L) in 30 min and 94% of benzotriazole (10 mg/L) in 120 min, and corresponding apparent first-order kinetic constants are 1.06 * 10−1 (min−1) and 2.11 * 10−2 (min−1), respectively. Moreover, the photocatalytic degradation results are also supported by the photoelectric performance test. Finally, the electrons transfer process and mechanism of photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants are also speculated. These studies provide new design ideas for the preparation of new heterojunction photocatalysts, which have broad research and development prospects.