Fabrication of N-rich graphitic carbon nitride supported CeO2 for improved photocatalytic charge separation and electrochemical electron transfer properties

Abstract

Environmental issues have become a worldwide problem due to the trace-level contamination of toxic pollutants in aqueous environments, which affects wildlife and human health. Hence, it's essential to need to remove toxic pollutants from wastewater systems. In this work, CeO2 nanoparticles with various weight percentages of nitrogen-rich carbon nitride (C3N5 or CN) heterostructure have been prepared by a simple ultrasonication method. The physical and chemical properties of as-prepared materials were identified by various techniques (XRD, FT-IR, UV-DRS, BET, TEM, and EDX). The optimized CeO2@CN (3) heterostructure showed the best degradation performance and low-level determination towards paracetamol (PC) compared to all other sole and binary heterostructures. The CeO2@CN (3) exhibits a remarkable conversion percentage (99.8 %), and rate constant (0.2361 min−1). The major active photodegradation species were investigated by radical scavenging experiments and improved electron transfer properties were confirmed via photoluminescence and photocurrent spectra. The photodegradation mechanism and kinetic rate were also investigated and discussed. The effective catalytic activity of optimized CeO2@CN (3) heterostructure is majorly ascribed to the stronger interfacial effects and faster electron transfer which reduced the recombination. Moreover, the CeO2@CN (3) modified electrode showed good selectivity and high reproducibility. The PC sensor exhibits a wide sensing linear range from 0.04 – 546 µM, the detection limit is found to be 0.0011 µM and the sensitivity is 0.467 μA μM−1cm−2. This method was useful for determining the PC in real samples.