Synergistic influence of vanadium pentoxide-coupled graphitic carbon nitride composite for photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutant: Stability and involved Z-scheme mechanism

Abstract

The removal of dyes from wastewater by photocatalytic technologies has received substantial attention in recent years. In the present study, novel Z-scheme V2O5/g-C3N4 photocatalytic composites were organized via simple hydrothermal processes and a sequence of several characterization aspects. The degradation results showed that the optimum Z-scheme GVO2 heterostructure composite photocatalysts (PCs) had a better efficiency (90.1%) and an apparent rate (0.0136 min−1) for the methylene blue (MB) aqueous organic dye degradation, which was about 6.18-fold higher than that of pristine GCN catalyst. Meanwhile, the GVO2 heterostructured PCs showed better recycling stability after five consecutive tests. Moreover, the free radical trapping tests established that •O2− and h+ species were the prime reactive species in the photocatalytic MB degradation process in the heterostructured PCs. The photocatalytic enhanced activity was primarily recognized as the synergistic interfacial construction of the Z-scheme heterojunctions among V2O5 and GCN, which improved the separation/transfer, lower recombination rate, extended visible-light utilization ability, and enhanced reaction rate. Therefore, the existing study affords a simple tactic for the development of a direct Z-scheme for photocatalytic heterojunction nanomaterials for potential environmental remediation applications.