Abstract
As the world faces water shortage and pollution crises, the development of novel visible light photocatalysts to purify water resources is urgently needed. Over the past decades, most of the reported photocatalysts have been in powder or granular forms, creating separation and recycling difficulties. To overcome these challenges, a flexible and recyclable heterostructured TiO2/polyvinylidene fluoride/graphitic carbon nitride (TiO2/PVDF/g-C3N4) composite was developed by combining electrospinning, sintering and hydrothermal methods. In the composite, PVDF was used as a support template for removing and separating the photocatalyst from solution. Compared with pure TiO2, the TiO2/PVDF/g-C3N4 composite exhibited the extended light capture range of TiO2 into the visible light region. The photogenerated carriers were efficiently transferred and separated at the contact interface between TiO2 and g-C3N4 under visible light irradiation, which consequently increased the photocatalytic activity of the photocatalyst. In addition, the flexible composites exhibited excellent self-cleaning properties, and the dye on the photocatalysts was completely degraded by the as-prepared materials. Based on the intrinsic low cost, recyclability, absorption of visible light, facile synthesis, self-cleaning properties and good photocatalytic performances of the composite, the photocatalyst is expected to be used for water treatment.
Highlights
In recent decades, photocatalysis has been recognized as the most promising and green technologies due to its environmentally friendly, low-cost and high efficiency characteristics
The cut TBOT/polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) (2.5 cm × 2.5 cm) and a certain amount of g-C3 N4 were placed into a 50 mL reactor for hydrothermal treatment to prepare flexible TiO2 /PVDF/g-C3 N4 (TPCN)
Curve a, only one broad diffraction peak located at 20.4◦ was detected, which was attributed to the pure β phase of PVDF [39]. This showed that during the electrospinning process, the TBOT did not convert to TiO2 with good crystallinity, and only PVDF and the precursors of TiO2 were presented in the form of fibers
Summary
Photocatalysis has been recognized as the most promising and green technologies due to its environmentally friendly, low-cost and high efficiency characteristics. TiO2 is limited in the practical applications, because it has a large band gap energy (3.2 eV) as an n-type wide band gap semiconductor and fast recombination rate of photogenerated electron-hole pairs [8] These defects lead to low utilization of sunlight and reduce the quantum efficiency, thereby indirectly affecting the photocatalytic performance [9,10]. As a narrow band gap semiconductor (2.7 eV), g-C3 N4 exhibits stable physicochemical properties, thermal stability and remarkable optoelectronic transmission performances It is non-toxic it is stored, and it can be obtained from a wide variety of sources [18]. Han et al prepared a g-C3 N4 /TiO2 composite by integrating electrospinning and calcination technology, and the hydrogen production rate under sunlight was 8931.3 μmol·h−1 ·g−1 [21] These prepared materials were still in powder form. The flexible TiO2 /PVDF/g-C3 N4 composite is a good candidate for use in the environmental treatment of organic pollutants
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