Abstract
Exploring a novel and efficient photocatalyst is the key research goal to relieve energy and environmental issues. Herein, Z-scheme heterojunction composites were successfully fabricated by loading g-C3N4 nanosheets (CN) on the surface of Mg1.2Ti1.8O5 nanoflakes (MT) through a simple sol-gel method followed by the calcination method. The crystalline phase, morphologies, specific surface area, and optical and electrochemical performance of the samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy-disperse X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), and electrochemical measurements. Considering the suitable band structures of the components, the photocatalytic performance was evaluated by photocatalytic H2O splitting and photocatalytic inactivation of Escherichia coli (E. coli). Among the samples, MT/CN-10 (the molar percentage of melamine to as-obtained Mg-Ti gel was 10%) shows superior photocatalytic performance, which the average H2 production rate was 3.57 and 7.24 times higher than those of MT and CN alone. Additionally, the efficiency of inactivating Escherichia coli (E. coli) over MT/CN-10 was 1.95 and 2.06 times higher as compared to pure MT and CN, respectively. The enhancement of the photocatalytic performance was attributed to the advantages of the extremely negative conduction band (CB) of CN and the extremely positive valence band (VB) of MT, the enhanced light absorption, and more efficient photogenerated charge carrier separation.
Highlights
During the past decade, there is an increasing interest in addressing the problem related to the growing concentration of energy shortage and other related damaging environmental pollutions due to the combustion of the fossil fuels [1,2,3]
It can be observed that the two typical diffraction peaks of C3N4 nanosheets (CN) appeared at 27.5° and 13.1° are classified to (002) and (100) diffraction planes, which are assigned to the interlayer stacking of aromatic segments and in-plane structural packing motif of tri-striazine units [29,30,31]
Those abovementioned results further proved that the Mg1.2Ti1.8O5 nanoflakes (MT)/CN heterojunction was successfully synthesized
Summary
There is an increasing interest in addressing the problem related to the growing concentration of energy shortage and other related damaging environmental pollutions due to the combustion of the fossil fuels [1,2,3]. The poor separation efficiency of photogenerated charge carriers and insufficient light absorption of bulk g-C3N4 directly synthesized by the thermal polycondensation method would lead to inferior performance and limitation of application [23,24,25,26,27,28] Given that of these shortcomings, constructing the Z-scheme heterostructure by recombining g-C3N4 with perovskite has been regarded as an ideal solution to expand the specific surface area and restrain the recombination of photogenerated charges. Compared with pure Mg1.2Ti1.8O5 and g-C3N4, the Z-scheme heterojunction photocatalyst exhibited excellent photocatalytic activity by taking the advantages of the more negative conduction band (CB) of CN, the more positive valence band (VB) of MT, the enhanced light absorption, and more efficient photogenerated charge carrier separation
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