Abstract
The development of efficient and non-toxic photocatalysts with a full spectrum response is a primary strategy in the area of photocatalytically mediated pollutant elimination. Herein, we report the preparation of novel nitrogen and iron co-doped carbon dots/gear-shaped WO3 (N,Fe-CDs/G-WO3) with significantly improved broad-spectrum utilization. Characterization results demonstrated that the gear-shaped G-WO3, decorated by N,Fe-CDs with excellent electron transfer/reservoir properties, possessed abundant oxygen vacancies, had large specific surface areas, had multiple light-reflections and had a narrow band gap. As a result, the N,Fe-CDs/G-WO3 composite exhibited excellent photocatalytic activity towards the degradation of water contaminants under full spectrum irradiation. For example, the photodegradative efficiencies of rhodamine B (RhB) reached 81.4%, 97.1%, and 75% in 2 h, under ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared (UV, vis, and NIR) light irradiation, respectively. Moreover, the N,Fe-CDs/G-WO3 composite also exhibited an outstanding photocatalytic degradation efficiency for other dyes, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products (PPCPs) like methylene blue (MB), ciprofloxacin (CIP), tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH), and oxytetracycline (OTC) (91.1%, 70.5%, 54.5%, and 47.8% in 3 h, respectively). The radical trapping experiments indicated that h+ and ·OH were the main reactive oxidative species (ROS), and the conversion between Fe (III) and Fe (II) played a key role in the photocatalytic reactions. Such a N,Fe-CD decorated material with brilliant photocatalytic activity has tremendous potential for application in environmental remediation.
Highlights
With the continuous process of industrialization and modernization in recent years, more and more organic contaminants, such as antibiotics, have been discharged, which causes increasingly serious environmental problems
The physico-chemical properties of composite materials were systematically analyzed. Their photocatalytic activities were investigated through the degradation of several target pollutants (Table S1), including rhodamine B (RhB), methylene blue (MB), tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH), ciprofloxacin (CIP), and oxytetracycline (OTC), under different types of light irradiation such as with ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared (UV, vis, and NIR), and the results indicated that the composite has excellent photocatalytic activity, stability, and reusability
As shown in the FT-IR spectrum of the N-CDs and N,Fe-CDs (Figure 2), the absorption bands at around 3400 cm−1 were ascribed to the O-H stretching vibration, the bands at 3210 cm−1 were due to
Summary
With the continuous process of industrialization and modernization in recent years, more and more organic contaminants, such as antibiotics, have been discharged, which causes increasingly serious environmental problems. Carbon dots (CDs), as a new type of carbon nanomaterial with sizes under 10 nm, have attracted increasing interest due to their unique properties including water solubility, up-conversion ability, low toxicity, excellent physicochemical stability, and light absorption properties [2,16,17]. Owing to their unique properties, CDs have recently been applied to enhance the photocatalytic activities of WO3 [18,19,20].
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