Bi2O2S/CAU-17 bifunctional heterojunction for boosting CO2 photoreduction performance origin from the simultaneous photoxidation of tetracycline

Abstract

To address the issues of energy scarcity and environmental pollution, a photocatalytic coupling system is employed to simultaneously harness electrons and holes in a single photocatalytic system. The current study presents a novel approach to construct a dual reaction pathway system for tetracycline hydrochloride (TC) oxidation and CO2 reduction. Herein, Bi2O2S/CAU-17 composite was designed and fabricated through a facile solvothermal method. The hybrid photocatalyst exhibited an excellent performance for simultaneous TC degradation and CO2 reduction. The CO-production rate can be reached 22.0 μmol g-1h−1 through the optimized 20% Bi2O2S/CAU-17 sample. Notably, the source of CO2 in the reaction system is solely derived from the photoxidation of TC. The theoretical calculations and experimental findings have shown that the existed Bi2O2S can enrich electron and separation of photo-generated electrons from CAU-17, thus, the holes in Bi2O2S and CAU-17 can be involved in the photodegradation of TC. Afterwards, the CO2 generated by TC oxidation moves to Bi2O2S via diffusion of molecules and could be efficiently reduced by electrons to produce CO. The development of this novel bifunctional Bi2O2S/CAU-17 hybrid photocatalytic system could provide valuable insights for the advancement of photocatalytic coupling reaction systems.